THE CABIN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



The Claim jumpers. The Westerners, The Blazed Trail, 

Blazed Trail Stories, The Magic Forest, Conjuror's House^ 

The Silent Places, The Forest, The Mountains, 

The Pass, Camp and Trail, The River/nan, 

Arizona Nights, The Rules of the GamCy 



WITH SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS 

The Mystery 



THE CABIN 



BY 



STEWART EDVvARD WHITE 




ILLUSTRATED 
WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR 



Garden City Nev/ York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

191Z 



v\ 



'X'o-i 



^k- 



ALL EIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, I9II, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

PUBLISHED, APRIL. IQII 

COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANT 






iGI.A2S(;531 



DEDICATED 

TO OUR FRIENDS OF 

PEACE CABIN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. "The Meadow" 3 

II. Short ... .... 13 

III. The Fireplace .... .21 

IV. The Trees 29 

V. On the Acquisition of Treasure ... 41 

VI. On Pioneering 49 

VII. On the Conduct of Life .... 59 

VIII. The Stream 73 

IX. Theophilus 89 

X. On Birds and Living Things ... 97 

XI. The Mill 119 

XII. On Strangers 133 

XIII. Our Neighbours 143 

XIV. The Guest Camp 157 

XV. The Ridge 169 

XVI. The Big Country 183 

XVII. Trout 199 

XVIII. Flapjack 221 

XIX. The Ethical Code of California John . 237 

XX. The Surveyors 249 

XXI. The Journey 273 

Note 281 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Cabin Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The vista of the meadow to the new-young Spring 6 
But though Short's is the chimney, the mantel and 

" fixin's " are mine 24 

A California forest counts as saplings the full-grown 

pines of our Northern woods . ... 30 

Our horses, long accustomed to the Trail ... 42 
As for . . . fences, they are there in the stand- 
ing timber waiting to be bodied forth by the crude 

tools at his command 50 

Tuxana 76 

Upstream a quarter mile we possess a hundred foot 

waterfall 80 

He is Kke the gargoyles on the great cathedrals, appro- 
priate and pleasing 92 

Teams of mules haul the large logs in fiom the woods 120 
Near the lower end of the meadow . . . .160 

Away back among the chaos of the snow peaks . 170 

In the heart of the forest 172 

The Big Country 184 

He falls dutifully in behind 224 

We made our computations 254 

Old Winter . . . whose twin blades are the Wind 

and the Snow 278 



^ 



THE MEADOW 



w^' 



THE CABIN 

I 

THE MEADOW 

IN JUNE a Sierra elevation of 6,500 feet is very 
interesting. The leaves are out on the alders; 
the dogveoods are in full bloom; the azalea buds 
are swelling; the spruce trees are tipped vi^ith 
fresh green; thousands of birds fill the aisles of 
the great forests with ecstatic song. Yet here and 
there beneath day-long shade lie patches of snow 
from whose edges trickle little streamlets. The 
pine needles lie pressed as sleek as a boy's Sundayed 
hair. Exotic-looking red snowplants raise their 
wax-like columns. Water flows where ordinarily 
water is not. And across swards where later a 
horse can walk dry shod, now he plunges mired 
to the knees. Withal the sky is intense blue; the 
air warm to the skin, but cool to the nostril; all the 
world is vibrant as a ringing crystal with the joy 
and life of the Morning of the Year. 
On such a time Billy, old California John, and 1 

3 



THE CABIN 

rode through the forest. Our way led along a 
plateau near the summit of a great mountain. 
We were on a gently rolling level of several miles 
in width, rising gradually ahead of us. To our 
left we could have ridden to where the mountain 
fell away three thousand feet precipitously. To 
our right, we could equally have climbed, had we 
so wished, several hundred feet more to the top 
of the range, whence we could have seen abroad 
over an area equal to many kingdoms of the earth. 
Neither of these facts, however, had any evidences 
to offer us. The great sugar pines and firs shut 
us in; the streams sang across our path. Occa- 
sionally we pushed through a leafy thicket that 
bathed us mysteriously in its fresh green; occa- 
sionally we mounted a little hill up which the tall 
trees marched ahead of us orderly. The smooth 
green bear-clover spread its mantle over the slopes. 
Thickets of snowbrush sprawled in the sunlit open- 
ings. The horses plodded along the dim trail, 
handling each foot separately after the wise fashion 
of the mountain animal. Pepper, the Airedale, 
and Tuxana, the bull terrier, patted behind. 

All at once Pepper and Tuxana scurried madly 
off at a tangent through the brush. After a moment 
we heard the excited and outraged chattering of 
a squirrel. 

4 



THE MEADOW 

"He just made it, and now he's getting rid of 
his scare by scolding about it," said California 
John. "He's telling them what he'd do if he 
was only as big as they are. Curious what a dif- 
ference size makes. Imagine an island where all 
the big animals would be little, and all the little 
animals big! I bet the lion would hunt his hole 
as quick as any of the bunch!" 

"And I suppose the mouse would be the terror of 
the place," suggested Billy. 

"No, ma'am," replied the Ranger. "A skunk 
four foot high would be the boss of creation." 

The woods road wound here and there, then 
straightened. A long, gentle slope led us slowly 
up. Beyond the ridge we could make out, not 
more trees, but a wide opening whose nature was 
as yet concealed. 

"That's it," said the Ranger. 

In a moment we had surmounted the shoulder 
of the slope. 

Before us stretched a long, fair meadow, green 
as new fir tips, enamelled with flowers. It fell 
away from us with a dignified spaciousness, to 
come to rest in a group of aspens. Behind them 
reared huge sugar pines, and all about stood others, 
solemn and aloof, drawing back in courtesy to give 
room for this gem of a meadow with its azalea 

5 



THE CABIN 

fringe, its trickle of flowing water, its flowers, its 
floods of sunshine. 

California John reined in his horse and threw 
his leg over the pommel of his saddle. 

"Told you it was purty nice," said he. 

Billy scrambled off" her horse. 

"Pretty nice!" she sniffed reproachfully. 

We followed her example and set out to explore. 
Directly at the head of the long vista had been built 
a sort of elevated seat or throne. It was a luxurious 
aff"air, ingeniously constructed of barrel staves 
curved to fit the back. A group of young trees 
shaded it: a cool breeze sucked up the opening of 
the meadow. 

"What a delightful throne!" cried Billy, "and 
how well it is placed! Who do you suppose built 
it } It must have been somebody nice to have 
cared for this." 

"No, ma'am," the Ranger replied stolidly. "It 
was some old sheepman. He probably didn't care 
a cuss for the view, but he could watch his sheep 
better from here." 

To the left of the throne, and slightly in the hol- 
low, lurked an old cabin. It proved to be a com- 
modious aff'air built of twelve-inch boards and 
shakes. Its rooms were thick with the forest 
litter; its foundation timbers were rotted and 

6 




The visla of the meadow and the new vounR Spring 



THE MEADOW 

awry; its roof was full of holes; its floor sagged 
alarmingly. 

California John tapped its walls. 

"Still good as ever," said he. "The fellow who 
built it moved out twenty-five years back. But he 
built her to stay. The roof leaks, but the rafters 
ain't sagged an inch. The foundation and the 
floor are about give out, but the frame is all right. 
There's good stuff in her yet." 

"Why did he move out.f*" asked Billy. 

"Company bought his claim for timber. See; 
his shed's full of split wood, just as he left it ready 
for the winter. It soon gets to be winter here. I've 
seen ten foot of snow on the level." 

He pointed out to us the remains of an old picket 
fence. 

"That was his old truck garden. You'd 
never think that had been ploughed and 
planted." 

He lifted one of the pickets and inspected it 
thoughtfully. 

"Split pickets set two inches apart," said he; 
"think of the work! One man felled the trees and 
split them out one by one. And he fenced all this 
meadow too. You can see the remains of that 
fence down by the lower corner. Splitting rails 
is hard work. And that's his spring-house. It's 

7 



THE CABIN 

stood all these years. Come on, try her. Coldest, 
finest water in these mountains." 

We dipped our rubber cups and poured a silent 
libation to the vanished builder. 

"Seems a kind of waste, somehow," said the 
Ranger, waving his hand abroad. "You have to 
keep things up, or they go. In another ten years 
there won't be anything left but his stumps where 
he cut the cedar. And they're rotting." He re- 
moved his old hat and rubbed his head. "He 
was a hard worker. And now all his works " 

"*Are one with Nineveh and Tyre,**' I 
quoted. 

He caught my allusion instantly. 

"That's so," said he. "He is in purty good 
company." 

We walked on down the slope. Unexpectedly 
the vistaed meadow spread out to right and left 
in bays and estuaries reaching boldly into the forest. 
It proved to be much broader than it had seemed. 
Springs trickled here and there from the hillside. 
The aspens clapped their innumerable hands in an 
unending applause. At the lowermost end of the 
meadow a stream threaded dense willow and alder 
thickets. We could hear it quietly gurgling and 
chuckling to itself somewhere in the shadow, but 
we could not penetrate to it. 

8 



THE MEADOW 

"Runs into the Creek twenty rod down," ex- 
plained California John. 

We therefore walked those twenty rods. The 
Creek dashed and sang and gloried over the rocks, 
foaming and leaping from pool to riffle and from 
riffle to pool. The other bank rose steeply up and 
up, and still up. We could not see the sky-line 
of it, for it, too, was clad in a beautiful and mys- 
terious forest. 



SHORT 



n 

SHORT 

IN THE far mountains, seventy miles from a rail- 
road and a mile up in the air, you have to do 
v^ith v^hat you can get. At home it is easy to order 
a thing, and then to w^ait briefly until that thing is 
accomplished. Here there is a v^ide gap between 
the conception and the production. 

So after v^e had decided that the meadow must 
be ours, we ran against unexpected difficulty. The 
old pioneer's cabin would not do, but the material 
of it would. We decided to build more accurately 
at the head of the long vista. But to tear down one 
house and build another needs more than one pair 
of hands. 

**We must hire a man to help us," said Billy, 
comfortably. 

Now that looks simple. But in the mountains 
are very few men, living far apart, and each busy 
at his own afi'airs. One would rather work for 
himself than for another, and any one with an axe, 
a horse, or a pick and shovel could always work 

13 



THE CABIN 

for himself. But also the mountain people are 
kindly and well-disposed to help. From mouth 
to mouth the message went, until at last I learned that 
on a specified morning a man open to employment 
would meet me at such an hour on a certain trail. 

I was there early, in anticipation of a wait. He 
was earlier, sitting at ease on his horse. We each 
gravely named the other by way of salutation, intro- 
duction, and identification, and turned our animals' 
heads toward the Meadow. 

The predominant notes of the man as you looked 
at him first were a great square seal-brown beard 
growing to the cheek-bones, and brown eyes wide 
apart, looking from beneath a square-chiselled brow. 
So massive and square-cut was this effect that I 
could imagine it quite possible to talk with him an 
hour, and then to go away carrying an impression 
of a big strong-framed man. As a matter of fact. 
Short weighed just one hundred and thirty pounds, 
and suffered from rheumatism. Nevertheless, the 
personality of the man was expressed rather by his 
Jove-like head than by his slight pain-racked 
body. He had a slow, calculating, stay-fast way 
of going at a heavy job apparently beyond his 
strength, that somehow carried it to accomplishment. 

I explained to him what I wanted, and he listened 
to me clear through, without interruption or com- 

14 



SHORT 

ment. Then he looked the old cabin over very thor- 
oughly from top to bottom, and took a few measure- 
ments. In eight words he pointed out the folly of 
our proposed location; and in eight more gave con- 
clusively good reasons for another, thirty feet farther 
up the hill. 

"All we'll need is shakes* for a new roof, and to 
clear up a little, and my tools. We'll need a team 
for about two days." 

"Where'll you get it.?" I asked. 

"Do' no. But I'll get it." 

He did. At the end of three days he appeared 
perched atop his tool-chest, a keg of nails, a bed- 
roll, and some groceries. We could hear them bang- 
ing through the woods almost as soon as they topped 
the ridge. About every hundred feet the driver 
would quite cheerfully clamber down, unhitch one 
or two spans of mules as the case might be, and 
haul to one side a greater or lesser obstruction to 
progress. Sometimes he had to chop a way through. 
Once or twice he hitched a span to the rear of the 
wagon in order to drag it back for a better start. 
The rate of speed was not many miles an hour, 
but the caravan left behind it a cleared way where 
passage there had been none before. 

That driver was the most cheerful, energetic 

* Shakes, «'. e., hand-riven shingles. 

IS 



THE CABIN 

individual ever planted in a dusty way of life. His 
form w^as long, his eye twinkling, his voice drawling, 
his movements deliberate but powerful, and his 
face rough-hewn after the Lincoln manner. Indeed, 
his clean-shaven lips had a chronic humorous quirk 
to them such as one might imagine illuminating the 
country circuit-lawyer at the recollection of a good 
story. None of this driver's moments seemed dedi- 
cated to ease. He hauled stone for the chimney, 
he hauled timbers for the foundation, he generously 
hauled " dead and downs " out of the way. And when 
he couldn't find anything more to haul, he put up 
elaborate feed-troughs for his animals, and dug fresh 
spring-holes, and generally invented things to do. 

In the mean time Short had made him a camp. 
I went over to see him, and found him examining 
one by one his tools. Over these he expanded. 
Each had its particular virtue, its individual story. 
He had homely reasons for the selection of each 
variety, and he delighted to give them. 

These days of machinery have rather tended 
to render obsolescent old-fashioned carpentry. So 
many things can be done more cheaply at the mill 
or the shops; so many devices are purchasable at 
such low prices, that the man who can fashion his 
appliances for himself is becoming scarce. Short 
knew his trade, and the theories of it, and the mathe- 

i6 



SHORT 

matics of its measurements and angles. He de- 
lighted in its exactitudes. He insisted on its thor- 
oughnesses. He approached every job without 
haste, in due deliberation of thought, with all com- 
pleteness of preliminary preparation. From the 
raw unplaned material he fashioned all things, even 
to panelled doors which the casual visitor will not 
believe did not come from the shops. At first I 
thought him slow. Then I changed my mind. 
Nothing Short called finished had ever to be done 
over. The Cabin has weathered six years of Sierra 
snows; it has been buried actually to the ridge pole. 
Not one line is off the true; the windows slide, the 
doors open freely, the floor has not warped or buckled. 

He showed me a short heavy clawed instrument 
like a dwarfed bent crowbar with a forked tail. 

"That's my own invention," said he. "It'll pull 
off' those boards without splitting one of them — I 
don't care how many nails the old fellow used." 

A moment later a sharp rip startled the mules. 
The first board of our lumber-pile-to-be was laid 
on one side. 



17 



THE FIREPLACE 



Ill 

THE FIREPLACE 

OF COURSE we had to have a fireplace — that 
went without saying — and it must be of stone. 
As the granite everywhere outcropped, that seemed 
to be a simple matter, but we speedily changed 
our minds. Any granite would not do. Short pro- 
nounced that near the Meadow of a most inferior 
quality. It looked all right, but he assured us that 
under the test of heat it would spalt, split, flake, and 
do other reprehensible things. So we extended our 
investigations. First and last, afoot and horseback, 
we covered considerable country before we found 
the proper sort of outcrop. It looked the same as 
any other to me; but Short was entranced. The 
frost had cloven it in blocks of various dimensions 
ready for our handling. One piece was of the exact 
size and shape for a hearthstone. We spent a good 
deal of labour to get that slab intact into place. We 
succeeded; but, as I remember it, the thing weighed 
nearly two tons! 

From the ledge all this rock had to be dragged to 

21 



THE CABIN 

the cabin site. We let the horses do the hauling, 
by means of a rough "stone boat"; but the heavy 
Hfting and rolHng was ours. 

Having acquired a formless pile of granite, it next 
became necessary to gather our mortar for cementing 
the stones together. Short pronounced a mixture 
of clay and salt the proper thing. 

Now, clay on a Sierra mountain is one of the 
scarcest commodities afforded by an otherwise bene- 
ficent nature. We found our little bank of it some 
four miles distant and quarter-way down the steep 
mountain-side. From that point we packed it in 
sacks — one slung either side the pack-horse, and 
one atop ^ eight miles — and the pick-and-shovel 
labour of digging it out! As for the salt, that 
came in from the "outside." 

Having thus, by dint of patient labour, gathered 
the raw materials, we were ready to begin. I always 
like to speak of the chimney "Short and I built." 
As a matter of cold sober truth, I did not have much 
to do with it. To be sure I was mightily busy. I 
carried pails of water, two at a time, from the spring, 
and I shovelled over that mixture of salt, clay, and 
water until my arms ached; and lifted chunks of 
granite until my back cracked; and I panted and 
heaved and tugged at scaffolds and things from 
early morn till dewy eve. But it was Short who 

22 



THE FIREPLACE 

laid the stone. Short's eye gauged craftily the slants 
and angles and openings. Short's ingenuity con- 
structed the slides and levers by which we elevated 
the heavier stones to the greater heights. And 
Short's was the triumph when that chimney "drew" 
perfectly. 

But before we reached that happy result we dis- 
covered two things; that we would need a lot more 
granite, and that the increasing difficulty of hoisting 
without appliances heavy rocks to an increasing 
height was going to extend the job somewhere into 
the next century. 

"I know of an old sawmill stovepipe," quoth 
Short. "It's down the mountain. We could take 
it apart and bring it up here, I reckon." 

His reckoning was correct. We acquired that 
pipe, and in due time finished out our chimney 
with it. It looks a little queer, until you get used 
to it; but it draws like a furnace. We cherish the 
illusion that some day we will face it up with more 
stone. That is one of the delights of living in the 
wilderness; there are so many things that some day 
you can do! 

But though Short's is the chimney, the mantel 
and "fixin's" are mine. I did them while he was 
at the doors. The mantel is a spacious affair. 
Twin columns of young sugar pine ten inches 

23 



THE CABIN 

through, and with the bark on, support a shelf of 
the same material. The shelf, however, is a log 
split in half and notched to fit accurately over the 
pointed tops of the columns. It is to the shelf sur- 
face I would call your attention. The smoothing 
was done entirely with an axe; — a labour of nicety 
most exhilarating when your strokes fall surely, and 
most disgusting when a blow awry spoils an hour's 
work. 

The fittings of the fireplace, too, are worth notice. 
When we built the chimney, we embedded in it a 
support for a crane. This was made of a piece of 
wagon tire. The crane was fashioned from the same 
material. From it depend old-fashioned pot-hooks 
and hangers, which are merely miscellaneous iron 
rods in disguise. Three utensils inhabit the fire- 
place: a heavy squat iron kettle, so ludicrously 
Dutch in build that we call it "Gretchen"; and two 
iron pots. Every evening, even in summer, is cool 
enough for a fire. We do a great deal of cooking 
on that crane. It is exceedingly pleasant to hear 
Gretchen sing while the flames leap up the cavern 
of the chimney. 

For the chimney is a cavern. It is wide and high 
and deep. Short built it to take comfortably a 
three-foot log. Wood is everywhere for the pleasant 
labour of chopping it. 

24 



THE FIREPLACE 

The "fire-irons," with one exception, are all home- 
made. Tongs are of tough oak steamed and bent 
double. The kettle lifter is an alder crook, appro- 
priately cut and peeled. The poker is a piece of 
wild cherry, the handsome bark left on. The bel- 
lows is a small rubber tube with a few inches of 
flattened brass pipe inserted at one end; you blow 
into the other. The "stand" is a fork of beautiful 
red manzaiiita, the ends of which are tacked either 
side one of the mantelpiece columns. But the fire 
shovel is the pride of the lot. 

That fire shovel is an example of the preciousness 
of treasure trove in the wilderness. A nail back of 
Shuteye is a marvellous thing. A tin can, whole 
and in good repair, becomes an invaluable cofi'ee-pot. 
An abandoned dishpan is appropriated with a de- 
light inconceivable. A chance piece of string re- 
joices the heart; and an old piece of paper is better 
than fine gold. 

So impressed is this truth on those who have trav- 
elled much away from civilization, that often a man 
becomes a sort of magpie in the collection of attrac- 
tive things. Billy is very strong on bottles. She 
never can bear to pass one on the trail, but will dis- 
mount and tuck her find in her saddle-bag, and at 
camp wash it carefully. Flat whiskey flasks fill 
her with a particular and especial delight. We 

25 



THE CABIN 

never, that I remember, used bottles for any purpose 
except occasionally to shoot at; but to Billy they 
looked valuable. 

This spirit v^as responsible for our lire shovel. 
We discovered it, rusted, without a handle, bent 
and disreputable, in a heap of burned debris. It was 
one of those sheet-iron affairs with a fluted edge, 
that is ordinarily varnished black and in company 
with a coal scuttle. Why anybody brought it into 
the mountains in the first place would be difficult 
guessing. Anyhow, there it was. It "looked valua- 
ble," so we took it along. Now at last its being was 
justified. We knocked oflF the rust, straightened 
it out, fitted to it a beautiful white dogwood handle, 
and installed it in a position of honour. Now we 
point with pride to the fact that we are the only 
people in these mountains possessing a real fire 
shovel. 



26 



THE TREES 



IV 

THE TREES 

UNTIL the Cabin was built, we camped near 
the foot of the meadow. After it was com- 
pleted, we made a bedstead among the azaleas. 
The bedroom we saved for the time it should rain. 
It almost never rained. So in that chamber were 
tools and clothes and supplies — and a bedstead, 
just to prove its title. 

If one sleeps out-of-doors, he lives in company 
with the trees and the stars, and sees the birds at 
their morning business. 

A few statistics must be permitted me, for only 
thus can I convey to you an approximate idea of 
our trees. A California forest counts as saplings 
the full-grown pines of our Northern woods. Next 
the Cabin verandah is a sugar pine twenty-seven 
feet in circumference above the swell. A few rods 
down the Meadow stands another, seven feet in 
diameter and two hundred and forty feet tall. At 
the end of the vista is the biggest of all, a giant of 
two hundred and eighty feet. These figures will be 

29 



THE CABIN 

better understood when I call to your attention the 
fact that our Capitol dome at Washington is about 
the same in height. Imagine one of these noble 
trees in Capitol Square. 

Nor am I offering you exceptions; only vigorous 
mature trees. Within my restricted view from the 
one window near which I am writing I can count 
twenty-seven nearly as big. The hills and slopes 
and valleys are cathedral-like with their straight 
columns, buttressed and massive, upholding the 
temple of the Out-of-doors. Some of their trunks 
are gray and venerable; but sopie, especially in the 
light of late afternoon, are warm with red and umber. 
In contrast to the green cool shadows they appear 
to glow with an incandescence of their own. 

The sugar-pine's limbs are wide and spreading, 
with a sturdy outward up-holding vigour. From 
their tips depend the long cones, daintily, like the 
relaxed fingers of a bestowing hand at the end of a 
robed arm. So always the sugar pines seemed to me 
the Great Ones of the forest, calm and beneficent, 
with arms stretched out in benediction of the lesser 
peoples. 

To one who has never seen them, the cones are 
wonderful. Such cones were never imagined in 
advance of their discovery. It means little to say 
that they are over a foot and a half in length. You 

30 



THE TREES 

must pick one up, and compare it mentally with 
your recollections of what pine cones were to your 
childhood. You will select a dozen of the first you 
see, discard some for others, larger; in turn exchange 
them, until at last, bewildered, you abandon them 
all in a maze of wonder. Scattered under the trees 
they look like the neglected toys of the Giant children 
who alone are fitted to play in this enchanted forest 
of vastness. And suddenly you feel very small and 
insignificant. 

Nor is the fancy entirely dissolved when you see 
them in place on the trees. They do not grow close 
to the limbs or the sturdier branches after the manner 
of the other conifers; but at the slenderest tips. 
There they depend gracefully, their weight bending 
down the tips in a long curve, swaying slowly to and 
fro in every breeze, as though hung there like so 
many presents for those w^ho mind their manners. 

That part of it, however, is a delusion. The pine 
squirrel and the Douglas generally get the cones, 
and these saucy, busy little animals do not mind 
their manners at all. Quite to the contrary. They 
clamber aloft, and cut loose the green cones, and let 
them fall, reckless of whether you are passing. 
Then they scamper down and patiently eat away 
to the heart in search of the nuts, leaving at the last a 
wonderful and delicate winding-stairway of a core. 

31 



THE CABIN 

That is beautiful; but more beautiful still is to 
make of the fallen cones a fire after darkness has 
thickened. The blaze is hot and grateful; but after 
it dies there remain ghosts of cones, each perfect 
in every detail, glowing incandescent, a last ethereal 
appearance before they fall silently to the earth from 
which, through many complicated natural processes, 
they have sprung. That little pile of white ashes 
represents all the solids they owe the soil. The 
rest of their structure they drew from the air about 
them; and in the brief glory of their last moments 
to the air they render back again its due. 

But though the sugar pines are the most spiritual, 
the firs, scarcely inferior in size, are the most mysteri- 
ous. From their pointed tops, down the candle- 
flame-shaped body of their frond to the rough 
wrinkled bark of them they possess a thousand 
planes to catch the lights and shades. From golden- 
green moulded surfaces, like the conventionalized 
foliage of the metal worker, to the dark velvet soft 
shadows of unplumbed depth the eye passes. At 
times of the year each fan branch is delicately out- 
lined in light green by the new tips. The firs are 
always alive with birds flashing into half-visibility, 
and flirting back out of sight again; appearing silently 
for a moment's inspection, and melting into the 
shadow as though dissolved; balancing on the tips 

32 



THE TREES 

or creeping deviously over the rough and v^rinkled 
bark. And to complete the effect, the firs deck 
themselves with a close-growing bright yellow- 
green moss, that even on the darkest day lightens 
the forest as by imprisoned sunshine. It is impos- 
sible to exaggerate either the brilliant sun-effect of 
this moss or the artistic skill of its distribution. It 
does not grow in festoons, but close to the bark like 
a fur an inch or so in depth. Sometimes it occurs 
in rings around the trunk, like the stripes on old- 
fashioned stockings. And it can take a dead twig 
or limb, and so completely cover it as to glorify it. 

Here and there also rise the buttressed, fluted red 
columns of the fragrant incense-cedar. Exceedingly 
handsome is this tree, curious with its fibrous bark, 
grand in the sturdy strength of its thickness and the 
blunt taper of its boles. But especially is it estimable 
for the spicy odour of it, and for its fragrance as it 
burns, for the beautiful colour of its wood, and the 
ease of its splitting into posts and rails. A few 
of its broad fans in the bed bring dreams of 
green forests. 

These are the strong of the woodland, the mature 
vigorous trees in the prime of life. But there are 
also the old men and the youngsters. Were it not 
For them the forest would be almost too austere for 
the comfort of human residence. 

33 



THE CABIN 

I like these old men, still straight and erect before 
falling at last to Mother Earth. There are three of 
them near the entrance to our domain, just before 
you top the ridge for your glimpse over to the 
meadow-opening. The bark has all long since fallen 
away, and the smooth bare trunks of them have 
weathered to the gray of old shingles. In the 
shadow and colour of the forest they shine forth like 
phantoms of trees. By moonlight they are par- 
ticularly ghostly. 

An artist I know used occasionally to paint the 
high mountains. His colour and light were good, 
and his technique not to be questioned, for he is a 
man of the finest genius. Yet something lacked. 
After long puzzling, the solution stared out at me 
from the canvas: his trees were all green and vigor- 
ous. There were no hoary old losers of the struggle 
against time; no "dead and downs"; no accent to his 
forest. For these stubs, and stripped trunks, and 
brown dying ancients are part of the character of 
the woods. With them removed you have a park, not 
a forest. 

But if these supplement the mature trees by the 
glory of their nakedness, the younger growths afford 
the intimacies without which the wilderness would 
be inhuman and unlivable. The thickets of fir 
and pine are full of tepid odours, grateful warmths, 

34 



THE TREES 

humming insects, chirpy, familiar little birds. They 
shut in tiny chambers of reverie from the austerity 
of the great forest. Around them cluster the fra- 
grant azaleas, the burred chinquapins, the thorny 
snowbrush, the manzanita — all the smaller affairs. 
They live below^ the august giants as we live below^ 
the stars, attending to their ow^n minute affairs, 
engrossed in their private activities. They are 
in the thick of it. Life is competitive, earnest, 
struggling. From the moment they push their way 
above the soil, still wearing helmet-wise the shell 
of the nut that produced them, they have earnestly 
to attend to the business of existence. At first their 
enemies are the sheep, the dryness, the hoofs of 
cattle, the cold shadow. Later they must fight each 
other. Of a dense thicket but one, or two at most, 
can mature. A hundred saplings are elbowing each 
other aside, climbing rapidly up toward the light 
and air, smothering each other, reaching jealously 
out for the moisture and sustenance which shall help 
them in the struggle. Those that are overtopped 
turn sickly in the shade of their stronger brothers, 
finally die, fall, rot away, and are fed upon by the 
triumphant victors. 

It is for this reason, perhaps, that the great trees 
possess their aloof air of supernal calm. The strug- 
gle and heat of combat are over for them. They have 

35 



THE CABIN 

fought their way clear to a foothold, to the calm 
appropriation by right of what they need. From 
the forest they have nothing to fear. Their aloof- 
ness is the aloofness that comes from experience, 
from the philosophy of duty done, from the almost 
Buddhistic contemplation of primal sources. 

The oftener one comes back to the forest, the 
more deeply is one impressed by the fact that these 
calm green people have entered fully into the over- 
philosophy we attain to only in snatches. 

Each summer, when I return to the Cabin, and 
look about at the well-remembered aspects of our 
woodland, the intervening eight months shrink 
painfully as the measure of life. It is but yesterday 
that we packed our belongings, locked the cabin 
door, and trailed down the mountain to civilization. 
Yet I am eight months older, have remaining to me 
just that much less of life. And the realization 
comes to me that the succession of summers will be 
like the succession of days here — where one sees 
the Dawn Tree gilding with the sunrise, and, behold! 
it is night and the stars are out! Time as a dimen- 
sion does not exist; its passage cannot be realized; 
its duration cannot be savoured. And the residuum 
of the days is so small. Pleasures enjoyed dissolve 
away. Only remain the things accompHshed, and 
they are few. In the presence of the Trees we look 

36 



THE TREES 

upon the poor little handful of accomplishment our 
eight months have left us, and we are ashamed. 

Little by little the commonplace, rich philosophies 
come back to us — the value of small things; the 
stability of the object created, even though it be but 
a new broom handle; the importance of taking your 
advantage from routine work, since there is so much 
of it to be done; the desirability of fixing your enjoy- 
ment on means rather than ends, for means occupy 
the greater hours, and ends are but moments. These 
things from one point of view are tiresome; from 
another they, like all the simple philosophies of life, 
are vases whose beauties show only where they are 
filled with experience and dear-bought wisdom. In 
the hurry and confusion of life the vases are emptied. 



37 



ON THE ACQUISITION OF TREASURE 



V 

ON THE ACQUISITION OF TREASURE 

WHEN the frame and roof of the Cabin were 
completed, Short left us with the empty 
shell. 

"I reckon you can get along all right now," said 
he, simply. 

By fortune we came to the Cabin from the Trail 
and not from the towns. So we began life, quite 
contentedly, on the simplest terms. All our house- 
hold goods, our personal effects and our food sup- 
plies we had been used to packing on a single mule. 
When that mule was unloaded, we were established 
and at home. 

Therefore we did not feel the instant necessity 
of the numberless conveniences which, little by 
little, as mood and leisure served, we have construct- 
ed for ourselves. We were then camping; and 
camping as we do it is such an easy matter! When 
the Cabin was done, we cut ourselves a fresh supply 
of fir and cedar boughs, hung up our camp kit, 
arranged our food bags, and settled down quite 

41 



THE CABIN 

happily. The only immediate innovation was a 
sheet-iron stove, which rode in, ludicrously aslant, 
on Flapjack's back. 

Of course the meadow had to be fenced. Our 
horses, long accustomed to the Trail, would graze 
contentedly for some time; but, sooner or later, 
their bellies full and their minds empty, the desire 
for travel would seize upon them. By luck the 
vanished builder on the meadow had left behind 
him some split cedar posts. We lashed these either 
side a pack animal, and distributed them. Then 
we dug holes, painfully, one at a time, with more 
or less luck in getting down to a proper depth 
through the rocky soil. After that we strung the 
barbed wire. It had come in, two rolls of it, well 
wrapped in sacking to avoid gashing the animal that 
bore it. When we removed the sacking, it showed 
all its teeth and gave its evil propensities full swing. 

I hate barbed wire. From the time you first 
string it out, when you stretch it, nail it, mend it, 
it is full of cussedness. No matter how gingerly you 
handle it, it will switch and jerk through your hands, 
it will snatch at your flesh, it will snap viciously 
at you like a scorpion. And when it is up, it lies 
in wait like a trap. Probably more good horses 
have been blemished and ruined by barbed, wire 
than by any other single agency. 

42 



ON THE ACQUISITION OF TREASURE 

But it turns cattle and it is quickly strung. The 
latter point made it obligatory in our case. The 
only alternative would have been a rail fence; and 
the rails were still growing in the trees. 

After the fence was up, and the gates and corral 
built, there remained apparently nothing more to 
do but to enjoy life in pleasant idleness. 

As a matter of fact, we have been doing things 
ever since. As fast as one thing is completed, 
another suggests itself. And a little at a time ac- 
complishes a great deal in the long run. In the four 
summers we have spent here we have, without a 
dollar of "hired help," written a very respectable 
list of accomplishment. Two bedsteads, a bureau, 
eight chairs, three tables, shelves and cupboards, 
a meat safe, a bath-house, a barn with two stalls, 
a spring boxed, a "cold storage," a drain, a dog 
kennel, a flagpole, saddle racks, nine hundred cedar 
rails split and in place, road improvements, the 
meadow ditched, and one by one a slow accumula- 
tion of treasures from the distant world outside — 
these have kept us busy and contented. 

Starting with nothing, each new acquisition is 
indeed a treasure. A thing is valuable in direct 
proportion to the amount of time you have spent 
on it. At home you hire a carpenter to build you 
a stall, and you appreciate it as a convenience. Here 

43 



THE CABIN 

you fell your fir, hew it square, carry it to place on 
your shoulders, nail it home with nails packed eighty 
miles. The days are full, and the labour exhausting, 
so you are at it only two or three hours a day. When 
the stall is done, you celebrate that fact, and ever after 
you cast a friendly and appreciative glance at all stalls. 

That is the principle applicable to all things. It 
is a truism that the loss of a catboat bought from 
the clerk's salary is more of a catastrophe than the 
wreck of the yacht purchased casually by the mil- 
lionaire. The catboat represents four months; 
the yacht perhaps ten minutes, gauging by the 
incomes of the two men. Time is value. 

This will explain the pride Billy takes in her 
table service. It is only white enamel ironware 
edged with blue, but it succeeded tin plates and 
kettles on the table. And let this be noted : when 
you have filed an axe for some years, you can hardly 
tear yourself away from a brand-new ball-bearing 
grindstone, carried in from the railroad terminus 
by horses. 

Let the principle sink in. Then, with due re- 
spect approach these facts which I will detail to you. 
And remember that this catalogue of possessions was 
not written all at once; but item by item, by chance, 
good fortune, careful planning, by long, hot, dusty 
journeys, by the courtesy of friends coming our way. 

44 



ON THE ACQUISITION OF TREASURE 

Each has had its day of especial and particular 
cherishing, each has been envied and admired by 
those who had it not, each has been an inspiration 
to further acquisition. 

Our kitchen has a genuine double boiler — you 
who have had jealously to watch lest the mush 
burned, please take notice. It has a cake lifter, 
a large dishpan, and a brace of saucepans. There 
is an iron wash-tub and a scrubbing board. 
We have a glass kerosene lamp and two extra 
chimneys. A looking-glass hangs uncracked in 
a good light. And if you had improvised for two 
years with an axe, a hatchet, and a cross-cut saw 
all items of carpentry and woodwork, you would 
appreciate the fact that we have a sledge and wedges 
for splitting, a crowbar, an auger, blasting powder 
and fuse, a rip-saw, a square, a plane, chisels, wood- 
rasps, hoe, rake. With these one can accomplish 
wonders. 

And each was brought in and exhibited and tried 
triumphantly as though it had been a Christmas 
present. 



45 



ON PIONEERING 



VI 

ON PIONEERING 

IN THE gradual evolution of our home on the 
meadow we have come very close to genuine 
pioneering. It is easy to play at such things: a 
few tents by a lake — with the farmer's permission — 
looks very like camping, and is often good enough 
fun. We have many illustrious examples of the 
men who have gone out into the woods to cut down 
their weekly tree. Most of us like to relieve our 
guides of a great deal of the cooking, the chopping, 
the packing, the paddling. This arises from a 
healthy desire to stretch our muscles, take exercise, 
play at doing those things which are a guide's every- 
day business. In so doing we may work very hard; 
that is not the point. 

But whatever we do, in such circumstances, is 
the manifestation of a spirit of play: and the proof 
of it is that at any moment we can deliver back these 
activities into professional hands. And even when, 
as often in more civilized communities, some of us 
elect to put up our own workshop, or build our 

49 



THE CABIN 

furniture, or even construct our house, it is a matter 
of deliberate choice. The carpenter is always there 
for the hiring. 

But in pioneer conditions a man constructs be- 
cause in no other way can he acquire those things of 
which he stands in desire or in need. He can hire 
no help; he has access to no shops. As for tables, 
chairs, fences, they are there in the standing timber 
waiting to be bodied forth by the crude tools at his 
command. The chimney is scattered away among 
the rock outcrops; the road, hidden among obstacles, 
is waiting to be defined and made passable; the few 
comforts he will grow to need are at the other end of 
the long trail. If this man is naturally a savage, 
he dwells beneath crude shelters under the trees. 
A week after he is gone, little remains to indicate 
where he has abided. But if he possesses in his 
soul the yeast of civilization, then most surely, 
little by little, as well as he may, he will construct 
and accumulate the customary appurtenances of 
that state. It is a necessity of his nature. In his 
surroundings he expresses man's instinctive desire 
for a habitation and certain orderly well-made 
things. If he likes the work, so much the better; but 
he may detest it. That seems to make no difference. 

So in our summer home we find ourselves very 
much in the position of those early backwoodsmen. 

KO 








1!:a::sj 



i ■11 11 



KiiCL-^. thrv, arr iliLr.j !■! ' . litinj; to bo bodied 

forth !)>■ the crude tools at his command 



ON PIONEERING 

If we want a thing, we have to make it or go and 
get it. Nobody can be had to do it for us or carry 
it to us. When we spHt rails or chop wood or dig 
ditches, it is not by way of posing for the strenu- 
ous Hfe, but because we need those things. It 
would never occur to us to undertake such affairs 
at home. We are in a way a self-contained com- 
munity. We cook, do our laundry, perform our 
daily tasks, because if we did not things would run 
down. It happens that we like all this, which is 
lucky. Even if such tasks were more or less of a 
grind, I think we should still come to the Cabin. 
In that event we should consider them, like the dis- 
comforts of the wilderness, only a just price 
to pay. 

Of course at any time we can saddle up and in 
ten days be back where flourishes the starched collar. 
That choice is always open to us. A similar choice 
was open to any wilderness dweller. There has 
always been a highly intensive civilization to which 
to return. The pioneer need not have left the 
towns. He did so because he disliked the life, 
or from restlessness, or a spirit of adventure, or in 
search of opportunity. The altruistic idea of open- 
ing up a new country was not one of his considera- 
tions; or it was of secondary importance. 

In this manner, without a conscious intention of 

SI 



THE CABIN 

so doing, we have to a certain extent succeeded in 
getting to the inside of a pioneer existence. Ob- 
jectively it has always seemed to many people 
constricted, narrow, hard, without inspiration, with- 
out material of which to construct a vantage point 
for the spiritual insight. Yet when approached 
by the regular road, this is soon proved untrue. 

It is astonishing to discover the physical possibili- 
ties of even the ordinary things we take for granted. 
We are apt to look upon a mechanic as plying a 
mechanical trade; that is to say, one whose routine 
makes very little call on his intelligence. It needs 
but one essay at the simplest of his jobs to discover 
the woeful error. Even aided by good instruction, 
we find our wits taxed to the utmost in figuring out 
reasons, expedients, and necessities of method; and 
properties, limitations, and possibilities of materials. 
To correlate a half-dozen of the simplest opera- 
tions so accurately as to produce a finished work- 
manlike result means a lot of thinking and sums up 
considerable concrete knowledge gained. And it 
is astonishing how interesting that knowledge is, 
and how important it turns out to be in appli- 
cation to a hundred different things. 

A rail fence is a common enough affair. The 
theory is simple: You fell a tree; cut it into proper 
lengths; spht those lengths into rails by means of 

52 



ON PIONEERING 

iron wedges; carry them to place; and arrange them 
in a zigzag. 

What happens r In the first place, you must know 
how to use an axe. There are few implements 
more satisfactory to handle well; and few more 
chancy, awkward, and, yes, dangerous, to a green- 
horn. A blow at a wrong angle will glance and 
twist the helve from your hand to injure an innocent 
bystander or gash your leg deep. This is a very 
common accident. Unless the blade, hits always 
in the same place you will only "chew into the 
wood," instead of cutting clean chips. A smooth 
surface to your kerf means that, at full strength, 
you can hit to within an eighth of an inch of where 
you want to, and with a heavier implement than a 
golf stick. You must further know how best to 
deliver your strength, when to increase the speed 
of your stroke, how to use your shoulders. Other- 
wise the expenditure of energy is excessive, and you 
soon tire to exhaustion. Furthermore, your axe 
must be kept razor-sharp — the cheerfully nicked, 
rounded edge of the old wood-pile weapon won't 
do at this work. The relations of steel to stone 
and file must be mastered. If you think 
rubbing one against the other is about all that is 
required, you have much earnest cogitation still to 
come. 

S3 



THE CABIN 

Perh:ips you may find some woodsman miracu- 
lously endowed with powers of explanation who will 
t( II you some of these things. If so, the information 
will be contained in hints, illuminating only through 
your own observation. But more likely you will 
have to try, and then figure a bit, and watch some- 
Ixnly, and figure a bit more, and then try it again, 
until finally by dint of both thought and practice 
you will arrive at skill. 

The axe plays but a part in the felling of your 
tree. Y(hi must with it cut a "notch" on the side 
toward whic ii you wish it to fall. A certain knowl- 
edge of probable weights of limbs and slant of 
trunks as alfecting centres of gravity is here neces- 
sary. Then from the other side you manipulate 
the cross-cut saw. 

It looks very simple as you watch a woodsman at 
work. Me draws the saw back and forth horizon- 
tally until he can insert a wedge in the crack. Then 
he continues work until the tree falls. 

But in the essay you find that it is quite a trick to 
keep the saw running straight across. It tends to 
sag at the ends, so your cut is in a down-drooping 
curve. This in time binds the instrument so that 
(;ven wedges cannot h{;lp your utmost strength in 
pulling It through. As for throwing a tree in any 
direction by leaving more or less fibre on one side 

£4 



ON PIONEERING 

or the other, that is a matter you would better smoke 
a pipe over. 

Once down, you measure off your trunk and start 
to cut it into lengths. The saw almost immediately 
binds fast. You must find out why; and after your 
discovery of the reason, you must invent a remedy — 
unless you have been remarkably observing when 
watching the same operation in the lumbering. The 
splitting into rails, also, is full of minor problems 
having to do with the run of grain, the action of 
wedges, and the like. Perhaps you will do as I did 
first — expend considerable preliminary work only 
to find that the tree you have prepared is cross- 
grained and will not split at all! Then you will 
learn to diagnose your timber before you start to 
fell it. 

And by the time you lay aside your first rail, you 
have done as much actual mental work, both in 
observing phenomena and in figuring from cause 
to effect along new lines, as you would have ex- 
pended in following somebody's philosophy. In 
addition you have entered into new relations v/ith 
a whole new series of facts. 

The application of this is true all along the line. 
There are thick technical books on carpentry, books 
that require as close study as any course in college. 
In the backwoods one's curriculum is wide even on 

55 



THE CABIN 

the side of mere practicability. A man must be 
constantly learning, and, as he learns, the various 
concealed properties of the possibilities and inten- 
tions of the complicated world about him become 
evident to him. He enters realms which in civiliza- 
tion are, by common consent, delivered intact into 
professional hands. 



ss 



ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 



VII 

ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 

CALIFORNIA JOHN was away on forest busi- 
ness most of the summer. Occasionally, 
however, he would ride over to see us. One such 
visit rises in my mind as particularly d propos to 
the remarks of the last chapter. 

I was cross-cutting a big cedar log, stooping over 
as the long saw bit lower and lower; working eagerly. 
The old man rode up on his shining sorrel horse, 
Star, with his inlaid silver bit, his rawhide bridle, 
and his beautiful carved-leather saddle. Younger 
rangers now go in for the plain and business-like, 
and profess more or less contempt for the "fancy 
fixings," but California John was of the old school. 
He nodded, flung one leg over his saddle horn, and 
watched me some moments. 

"Hard work," he proffered after a time. 

I nodded back. I had no wind left for conver- 
sation. 

"You had that sawed way through ten minutes 
ago," said he, after a time. 

59 



THE CABIN 

In sheer astonishment at this, I quit work and 
stood upright. 

"Sawed way through!" I repeated stupidly. 

" Yes ^ — in your mind," said he. "Your mind's 
been sawin' that log through a plumb lot quicker 
than your saw. And you've been just humpin' 
tryin' to catch up. That's what makes it hard 
work. There's your mind standin' first on one foot 
and then on the other, plumb distracted waitin'; 
and there's your body all out of breath hustlin' and 
strainin' to catch up. That's what makes it such 
hard work. You're tirin' yourself down, boy. You 
got to keep your body and your mind together on 
the job. Put on brakes, and don't get a thing done 
before it is done." 

I quit sawing then and there, for I saw California 
John was in a dissertative mood, and that is worth 
much more than any number of cedar rails. 

"That's the way to enjoy yourself," said the old 
Ranger, comfortably. "Trouble is, when a man 
starts out to do a thing, he just nat'rally sees it all 
done before his eyes, and he strains himself day 
in and out till it is done. And mebbe it takes a 
long time to do — a month or two, say. And he 
hasn't had any fun with himself at all endurin' of 
all that time. He's just plumb wasted a month or 
two out of his life; and he probably won't get but one 

60 



ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 

life — here. A man don't want to give a cuss 
whether a thing gets done or not, but just whether 
he keeps workin' along at it. If he does that, it's 
bound to get done, and without worryin' him. And 
he ain't so plumb feverish all the time." 

He slid out of his saddle and squatted down by 
my cedar log. 

"If you don't come to that way of thinkin', sooner 
or later you get this here nervous prostration," 
said he. "No manner of doubt of it. The world's 
chuck full of tiresome jobs that don't really mean 
nothin' — washin' clothes, and sweepin' floors, and 
choppin' wood that you burn up, and generally 
millin' around in a circle that don't get nowhere." 

" Routine work," I suggested. 

"Precisely. A man gets a notion that these jobs 
are wastin' his valuable time; he begins to hustle to 
get them behind him and out of the way. That 
means he does a poor job, and gets all wrought up 
and impatient, and tries to get in a week's work 
by sundown." 

He reached up to rub his horse's soft nose. 

"We got to make up our minds that a lot of our 
life is taken up with this routine work — same thing 
over and over, or work that don't jnake nothing. 
So we ought to have sense enough to find real livin' 
in them as well as in doin' real things. Any job's 

6i 



THE CABIN 

got a lot of fun in it, if you ain't in too devil much 
of a hurry to finish it. You got to do the job any- 
way; so you might just as well get the fun." 

We drifted into a discussion of the various phil- 
osophies of life. I asked him if he had always been 
contented to live his kind of life in the mountains. 

"Well," said he, "when I was younger I used to 
figure a good deal whether I was doin' all I ought to. 
Seems as if a man ought to do the best he can. He 
must have been put here for some reason. It's 
hard to tell what you're supposed to do. Now 
some books* I've read claim a man ought to make 
the very best out of himself he can, develop himself 
all round, and get as high up in the scale as he can. 
Then there's others that claim he ought to get out 
and do something definite — hustle along human 
progress — or he ain't no good at all. What do 
you think about it.?" 

"I suppose a man ought to build something in 
this world." 

"What was that you said a while back on Nineveh 
and Tyre V asked the old man quizzically. "There 
was the Moorish raid into Spain" — he suddenly 
interjected one of his astonishing surprises in general 
information — "that was a mighty serious affair 

*California John, in spite of the apparent evidence of his vernacular, was a 
voracious and rather intelligent reader during the winter months. 

6z 



ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 

at the time — worth headhnes way across the page, 
with all sorts of murders, speeches, oppressions, 
and so forth. As near as I can make out the total 
results was a sort of old summer resort built of 
adobe mud." 

"Adobe.?" I repeated, puzzled. 

"I forget her name. Place named after her near 
Los Angeles." 

"Oh! The Alhambra!" I cried with a burst of 
amusement. 

"Yes. Well, what's the use of doin' things.?" 

I offered no immediate answer to this, so the old 
man went on. 

"Another thing: what did the Lord make such an 
everlasting variety of a world for, anyway .? Ever 
think of that .?" 

"Never did. What of it.?" 

"Just this. I don't care what you know, or how 
big a head you've got, or what sort of an education, 
there's about four million things you don't know 
nothin' about. Somebody may know it, but you 
don't. You can't take up anything, I don't care 
what it is or where it is, without getting a whole 
heap of new knowledge about things in the world, 
and their natur', and how the cussed things act. 
A thing looks simple and dead easy to do — and it 
am t. 

63 



THE CABIN 

I nodded, my thoughts on my recently and pain- 
fully acquired experience with cedar rails. 

"The Lord's scattered things to learn all over 
everywhere. I don't care what you pick up, there's 
enough there to take all the strength of your mind 
for a while, anyway." 

" 'The world is so full of a number of things 

I am sure we should all be as happy as kings,* " 

I quoted. 

"Who said that?" asked California John like 
a flash. 

"Stevenson," said I. 

"Well, he's dead right. Only I thought I was 
the only fellow that had thought of it," said the old 
man ruefully. "There's quite a number of things; 
and to my notion in His eyes they're all one about 
as important as another. 

"Oh, hold on!" I cried. "Do you mean to say 
that you really believe it's as important to ditch 
that meadow as to dig the Panama Canal ?" 

"Not to Roosevelt," replied California John 
quietly. "Mebbe to me." 

He let this sink in. 

"That's why the Lord made such an everlasting 
variety of a world for, so every man could find his 
own kind of knowledge. There used to be a fellow 

64 



ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 

down at Toll House, who had been reading these 
health magazines until he began to eat nuts and 
raisins and olive oil and pine sawdust — and not 
much else. Old Doc Harkness was talkin' to him 
once when I was there. 'But, Doc,' says he, 'this 
yere editor don't eat nothin' else, and he works fifteen 
hours a day, and keeps healthy on it.' 'Sure,' says 
Doc. 'And ain't they the healthiest sort of foods ?' 

' Sure,' says Doc again. ' Then why ' ' Do you 

like 'em .? ' the Doc interrupted him. ' Not very well,' 
said this fellow at Toll House. 'Well, then they 
ain't healthy for you. That's why there's forty- 
eleven sorts of grub — so you can get what you like. ' " 

He threw back his head and laughed. 

"So when I figured all that out," he continued, 
" I see that a fellow was supposed to stick to what he 
likes. I like mountains and woods. And when I 
got the right slant on it all, I began to get onto the 
true innards of the situation. Everything's im- 
portant. I don't believe one thing's any more 
important than another, if a mans doing what he 
likes. Some folks like Panama Canals, and some 
like meadows. Neither of 'em is goin' to boost 
the race much in the long run, because give 'em time 
enough, and they'll all be gone — like the old im- 
provements on this meadow or those two fu-tile 
old cities you mentioned." 

65 



THE CABIN 

"What does count then?" I asked, a Httle be- 
wildered. 

"The man," returned California John sharply. 
"I don't know how, but that's it. If he's the right 
sort, why he helps the next fellow to be the right 
sort, whether he tries to or not, and whether he 
knows it or not. After a few thousand year of that 
sort of thing we get somewhere — and it don't much 
matter whether we get there through a Panama 
Canal or go by hand." 

"If everybody felt that way, we would have little 
material progress," I offered rather feebly. 

"Everybody don't Hke hogs," returned CaHfornia 
John. 

He rose stiffly to his feet and fumbled in his saddle 
pockets. 

"That reminds me," said he. "Here's those 
magazines you lent me." 

We fell into a discussion of their contents. Among 
them were the results of an investigation into the 
phenomena of spiritualistic seances. The undoubted 
authenticity of certain manifestations combined with 
their futile character engaged our attention. 

"Nobody knows nothing about it, and that's just 
where it always ends. And you can go potterin' 
off into speculatings about it all till they land you 
in the padded cell/' said California John. "And 

66 



ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 

you notice these fellows always do land in the padded 
cell. The whole business looks to me plumb foolish. 
Of course, there's something there, but what's the 
sense strainin' your poor intellects trying to find out 
about it when there's so much else to think about. 
Probably in a future state all that will be as simple 
and easy as takin' a drink. A fellow'd feel mighty 
sick after spendin' his whole life here tryin' his 
little darndest to come at a whole lot of obscure 
problems to find it as plain as A B C over there. 
If he'd only had sense to wait, he'd have saved him- 
self a lot of trouble and had time for what he was 
meant to pay attention to. And it would jar him 
especial bad if he found that pine trees and trolley 
cars and <:^ment walks and doodle bugs and tomato 
cans were plumb mysterious and soul strainin' over 
there: then he'd be sorry he hadn't sized them up 
while he had a good chance, 'stead of wastin' his 
time.'* 

"What makes you believe in a future life.'"' I 
asked him curiously. 

"Common sense," replied the Ranger. "Just 
ordinary common sense. Don't need any miracu- 
lous revelations. Everything fits in too well. Hot 
weather makes you sweat, and sweat evaporatin' 
cools you off. There you have it. Every darn 
thing / ever discovered fits into everything else 

67 



THE CABIN 

better than I could have planned it if you gave me 
all the time there is and a w^hole library full of 
books. And you can see the reason for it, if you're 
sahe enough. But how^ about us ^. You v^ere askin' 
a while ago. What's the use of anything w^e build 
with our hands, except as how it makes us more of 
men; and what in thunder's the use of our gettin' 
to be more of men anyhow ? Everythin' to do with 
us is plumb incomplete. It's just common sense 
to judge as how the game isn't finished with this 
here. Just common sense." 

"What becomes of us?" I inquired. 

**He uses us accordin' to what we have turned 
out to be. This here is a sort of nursery garden, 
as I look at it, like the one the Government has 
put in down to San Gabriel. By and by we'll be 
transplanted, same as those little seedlings." 

"How about the fellows that don't make anything 
of themselves ?" 

Cahfornia John pointed to the pile of debris by 
my cedar log — the broken, twisted, split and 
spoiled rails. 

"Just culls," said he. "I reckon you'll find some 
other use for them there rails — firewood, stakes, 
and the like." 

"There's a lot of them in this world," said I 
sceptically. 

68 



ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 

California John rose slowly. Star stooped his 
glossy head for the bridle. 

"His patience is infinite," said the old man sol- 
emnly. He reflected for a moment. Then his eyes 
turned on me with the twinkling flicker of fun in 
their depths. "Son," said he, "I've often noted 
two things about trees : the stunted little twisted fel- 
lows have had a heap hard time, what with wind 
and snow and poor soil; — and they grow farthest 
up on the big peaks." 

He swung aboard his horse and gathered up his 
reins. 

" Got to go see whether old Cook's cattle are tres- 
passin' again," said he. "That old fool will keep 
on till some day I'll call him everythin' but a gentle- 
man." 



69 



THE STREAM 



VIII 
THE STREAM 

WE HAVE several good springs about the 
meadow, and at the foot of it they con- 
verge to form a tiny brooklet that sings and mur- 
murs and gurgles through the alders. But a few 
hundred yards farther is a real stream — the water- 
course that marks the foot of the gentle declivity 
on which we live. The other bank of it rises very 
steep and high. It is grown with forest, and the 
lofty screen of it catches the breeze in all its fronds 
at once, so that the organ note is very solemn and 
austere. But the Stream itself is a robust and vig- 
orous and cheerful person, always busy with affairs 
of its own. 

For one thing, it is a mountain brook, and there- 
fore occupied with finding its way down hill. It 
hurries around corners, and dashes down shallows, 
and tumbles over cascades, and swirls in eddies, 
and trickles down riffles with the rattling undertone 
of the rolling of little stones. Occasionally, how- 
ever, it enters a still reach beneath overhanging 

73 



THE CABIN 

bushes, where it flows smooth as a mirror, and in it 
one can see the sky. There the familiar Httle birds 
turn upside down and sideways searching for in- 
sects under the leaves, the waterbugs skate spas- 
modically here and there, and frogs kick about or 
sit in rows on the banks. 

So far our Stream is very like another. But we 
have several features to distinguish us. Chief of 
these is a very large leaf. It grows singly at the 
end of a stalk two or three feet long, and is as wide 
as a small parasol. This must be literally under- 
stood. In fact Billy occasionally plucks one for 
use as a sunshade. It grows where it should, for 
the best effect — - that is, in all sorts of niches, nooks, 
corners, and ledges, where one would be most apt 
to plant them were he going in for rockwork garden- 
ing effects. Once in a while you will find them 
growing in regular ranks out from the shoals of the 
riffles in such a manner as to conceal the entire 
stream bed beneath. The effect is exceeding curious 
and tropical — the straight stems spaced, like a 
miniature forest, and the broad flat leaves above. 
They fill the creek-bed with green, and only oc- 
casionally can the observer catch the flash and 
movement of the bright water beneath. In the 
autumn they turn vivid with colour, and then serve 
more than ever as accents to the whole picture. 

74 



THE STREAM 

Early in our stay we sought out the best and 
nearest place for a bath. In these streams, the 
usual way is to deepen the closest approach to a 
natural pool by means of a dam. We found what 
we wanted, and were about ready to begin work on 
it, when fortunately Billy was seized with the spirit 
of rambling:. She returned full of the enthusiasm 
of discovery. 

We accompanied her. Down among the pines, 
across a fern flat, through a screen of young fir she 
led us. There below us the Stream rushed down a 
long, smooth, slanting rock and into a real pool. 
It was about thirty feet long, twenty wide, and 
looked to be six feet or so deep. The opposite side 
was a clear unbroken sheet of rock that plunged 
steeply. The bottom was of sand. 

"That isn't the best of it," said Billy. "Come 
down closer." 

We did so. A ledge of rock dropped straight 
off into deep water. 

"You can jump in from that," said Billy. 

Alongside of it, and a foot lower, another ledge 
sloped gently. 

"Then you can walk out on that one," pointed 
Billy, "and rub down. Then you can dress on this 
dry one in the sun. And it's a regular dressing- 
room; see how thick the bushes are all around!" 

75 



THE CABIN 

The swimming-pool was thereupon established. 
Tuxana looked doubtfully at the water and shivered. 
She is a ridiculous dog. If you throw a stick 
into the water, she will plunge eagerly after 
it, no matter how cold the water may be. And 
she will keep it up all day. But if you pick her 
up and cast her in for the merely utilitarian 
pifrpose of a bath, she scrambles out hastily, and 
shivers in the most piteous manner. Our usual 
procedure was to have our own bath, and then to 
throw in the dogs. Tuxana knew this, and always 
lurked miserably in the bushes until commanded 
so sternly to come forth that she did not dare dis- 
obey. Then she squatted down, became absolutely 
limp, and weighed a ton. With a splash she dis- 
appeared. As soon as she came to the surface, 
she struck out vigorously for the opposite shore, 
scrambled out with great difficulty and much scratch- 
ing on the steep rock, and took her position in the 
sun. There she sat, both hind feet off the ground, 
indulging in exaggerated shivers, eying us dis- 
gustedly. When we were ready to go home, she 
would cross back over a cedar log that had fallen to 
make a convenient bridge. 

Tuxana is a very wise individual. I have read 
some enormous volumes to prove that animals do 
not think. This seemed to me in each case a des- 

76 



THE STREAM 

perate effort on the part of the author to bolster up 
his pride in being a man. It seems to be a matter 
of definition. I could quite legitimately prove by 
the same arguments that most people do not think. 
However it may be, something goes on behind old 
Tuxana's wrinkled forehead that results in some 
highly ingenious — and amusing — activities. 

For example, and by way of dissertation, the 
nights in these mountains are pretty chilly, so that 
the back of the kennel is naturally the best protected 
and coziest. When I would put the dogs out of an 
evening, they would scramble hastily to win the 
coveted position. Tuxana, being slowest, usually 
got left, and had to content herself with an outside 
and chilly bed. 

Now, the other dogs are young and excitable. 
Tuxana evidently considered all the quantities of 
the problem and evolved the following stratagem 
which she invariably thereafter employed with 
uniform success: 

When I would knock the ashes from my pipe, 
Tuxana, recognizing the symptoms, would advance 
to the closed door, growling fiercely. The moment 
the door was opened, with a fierce bark, she rushed 
in the direction of the bushes. In the direction, 
I say; for immediately the other dogs, their hair 
bristhng, their eyes alight with excitement and eager- 

n 



THE CABIN 

ness, had darted like whirlwinds into the darkness 
to get the game, old Tuxana dropped her bristles, 
wagged her tail, and departed for the kennel. There 
with many grunts of satisfaction she selected her 
corner. Five minutes later the other dogs, having 
scoured the woods, wasted many observations, and 
lashed themselves to a frenzy of excitement over 
nothing, returned to find her all settled for the 
night. 

At first I could hardly believe the ruse intentional, 
but, after its third or fourth repetition, no other 
conclusion seemed tenable. 

But to get back to our bath. After Tuxana had 
suffered several cold baths, she resorted to strata- 
gem. At first she ran gaily over the cedar log to 
the other bank, as though she were sure the only 
reason we threw her in was so she would get to the 
opposite side. There she sat down, and wiggled 
the tip of her tail, and laid back her ears, and twin- 
kled her eyes, and lolled her tongue, and generally 
looked as pleased and as ingratiating as she could. 
This did not work. After several days she tried 
shaking herself vigorously all over, just as a dog 
does when he has emerged from the water. I 
imagine she attempted thus to convince us she had 
already taken her bath. No go. Her final effort 
was the most amusing of all. She walked from 

78 



THE STREAM 

the bushes in her most dignified manner, marched 
to the Stream and began to drink. She drank and 
drank until we thought she would burst. Then she 
glanced at us sideways and drank some more. We 
were puzzled. All at once Billy shouted aloud 
with laughter. 

"Don't you see .f"' she cried. "The old thing is 
pretending she thinks you are offering her a drink 
when you make her come down here." 

When Tuxana could hold no more, we threw 
her in anyway. Since then she has given up the 
struggle and accepts cold baths as one of the in- 
evitable evils of life. 

Yet in her shiveriest moments all one has to do is 
to pick up a stick. Immediately Tuxana's ears are 
up, her eye alight. In she plunges, leaping far out, 
landing with a mighty splash. 

As a matter of fact, one cannot blame Tuxana 
in the least. That water is very cold. It is born of 
the snows, and it flows through shaded ways, and 
swiftly. One hesitates considerably, plunges with 
a gasp, flounders wildly for the ledge, and emerges 
as rapidly as a fairly slippery rock will let him. The 
calling it a swimming-pool is somewhat of a mis- 
nomer. No one ever really swims, except the few 
strokes necessary to reach shore, and no one was 
ever known to go in twice to a bath. But the glow 

79 



THE CABIN 

of reaction is fine, and a rubdown makes you glad 
you came. 

A quarter-mile upstream, and just at the limit of 
our domain, are the Falls. There the ridge breaks 
down abruptly for a hundred feet or so, and the 
Stream must perforce follow. At first it used to be 
a great trick to get to the Falls without losing time 
and rending your garments. There is much snow- 
brush and chinquapin, and a tangle of little hills 
and hollows. Now, however, we have a trail, of 
sorts. 

The Falls themselves are quite marvellous, and 
for several reasons. At the foot of a cascade is a 
wide and deep pool over which you cross by a log 
four feet through. Once on the other side you 
come to a broad slanting sheet of rock over which 
the Stream flows like a thin film. Scrambling up 
this you are face to face with the Falls proper. The 
Stream drops over a ledge in two branches. Half- 
way down, the ledge angles to form a deep recess 
or cave — eight or nine feet high, four or five deep, 
and across the creek-bed in width. Before this 
recess the water falls in a glittering veil. The cave 
itself is cushioned with thick green elastic moss, 
Hke upholstery. In it, as in a garden, grow tall 
ferns in groups, and more of the big-leaved plants. 
From crevices in the walls are suspended other 

80 




L'p.-lrfiiir a quartt-r milt- we possess a hunflre<l toot waterfall 



THE STREAM 

smaller ferns. A more beautiful green cool bower 
of dampness for a water nymph could not be imag- 
ined. As frame to the picture are jutting rocks 
around which the water divides or against which it 
splashes; fringes of ferns and saxifrage; and, 
square in the middle, just as a skilful scene painter 
would place them for the best theatrical effect, 
grow a clump of big leaves. And as a general sur- 
rounding, the forest. 

The place is remarkable at any time, but in the 
late autumn, when the leaves and ferns have turned 
golden and orange, it is almost unbelievable. We 
once had a friend visit us who was a most excellent 
artist and a marvellous manipulator of the English 
language. 

"Now look here," said he, "this is all very well. 
But you've spoiled my last atom of respect for the 
fellows who made the chromos. I used to think 
that at least they had originality — they must invent 
their subjects — that nothing like the things they 
depicted could possibly exist in conjunction. The 
other day you showed me the babbling brook flow- 
ing through the green meadow with cows grazing and 
trees on either side and the preposterously contrast- 
ing snow mountain accurately in the vista. Now 
this! If some grand opera star will kindly trip 
down these obviously property rocks and warble 



THE CABIN 

us a few strains, it'll be complete. By Jove! did 
you ever see anything like it?" 

A swift dash carries you through the falling veil 
and into the recess. To your surprise you will find 
yourself quite dry; the great slab of rock lets through 
not the smallest trickle of moisture. The deep green 
cushion of moss is as wet as a sponge, but only 
through absorption from below. It is a queer sen- 
sation to look out upon the world from this fairy 
bower. The falling water wavers and sparkles, 
the blurred landscape flashes and dims, a super- 
brilliance of refraction fills the cave, the rushing 
sound of waters isolates you completely from the 
customary impressions of the forest, as nothing else 
could. When you step outside again it is as though 
you are suddenly awakened. The trickle of the 
Stream, the songs of birds, the buzz of insects, the 
wind in the trees, your companions' voices burst 
on you as when a door is opened. Some day some 
one will find the nymph of the Stream at home, and 
so will fall under an enchantment to dwell always 
in that bright world apart. 

The artist and I used to take long rambles over 
the mountains. We were continually discovering 
all sorts of interesting things: little lost meadows 
like green gems in cups of the hills; beautiful open 
parks of trees smoothly carpeted with pine needles, 

82 



THE STREAM 

and strewn negligently with the great cones; hill- 
sides of warm flowering bush; broad sheets of smooth 
rock many acres in extent; outcropping dikes like 
fortresses; ridges where the deer fed in droves. 
Among other things far back toward the backbone 
of the range we came upon the headwaters of the 
Stream. 

It was in the fall of the year, and the deciduous 
leaves were gorgeous. At that time these lesser 
people of the forest get their true value. During 
the other seasons they blend so with the greens 
of their mightier neighbours that they are lost. But 
now the very evergreen character of the forest throws 
them into bolder relief. Here and there the dog- 
woods glow, visible down the aisles and through 
the glimpses for a long distance, their reds and soft 
pinks and rose-colours delicate as the petals of a 
flower. Around the clearings the azaleas form a 
border of the most brilliant flaming oranges and 
yellows; and the aspens are as golden as sunshine, 
and the oaks ruddy as a fire. While green, these 
trees have seemed a sort of shrubbery to the forest 
proper. Now they show in their true proportions, 
as trees of the sort we see at home and are accus- 
tomed to. And now at last, this being fully appre- 
ciated, the pines tower as the giants they are. It 
is an impressive season. The woods thus seem to 

83 



THE CABIN 

have grown taller; the bird-songs have stilled; not 
a breath of wind stirs the pine-tops; the tricklings 
of little rills have hushed. A rather reproving 
portent is in the air. Those creatures that stir 
abroad, do so furtively, silently. A flash of wings, 
a glimpse of brow^n — and again the immemorial 
hush of the year falls across the forest like the haze 
of a great smoke. 

We came, on this day, to a point on the slope of 
a hill whence we could see through the straight 
tree-trunks to a glade. Glade is the word, used 
this time in one of its few veritable applications. A 
lawn of green flung in a hollow, and halfway up a 
slope; a dozen big gray boulders around whose bases 
grew gorgeous bushes; half as many clumps of the 
same gorgeous bushes scattered here and there; a 
fringe of orange-leaved azaleas; and the great solemn 
trees standing in stately ranks as though guarding. 
And down through the forest ran a straight vista 
between the trees, uniform in width, carpeted with 
green, in which flowed a little brook. The sun 
was low and ahead of us. The shadows lay 
long across the meadow, and the forest was a mysteri- 
ous alternation of smoky-looking shade, impene- 
trable darkness, and the brilliance of sky through 
tiny openings. From the forest seemed to flow 
that lucent mist one always observes when looking 

84 



THE STREAM 

across barriers to a westering sun. The artist gazed 
for some time in silence. He was deeply impressed. 

"Gee!" said he at last. "If the fairies don't pull 
off a fandango every moonlight night, they don't 
know a good dance-hall when they see it!'* 

We broke through the bushes to the meadow. 
There out in the grasses was a round sunken pool, 
ten feet across, pellucid, utterly calm. From its 
lower edge stole a timid trickle of water. It crept 
through the grasses down the meadow, disappeared 
under an old burned tree-trunk, trickled in musical 
drops over another, gathered courage as it grew, 
finally gurgled away down the long avenue guarded 
for it by the stately trees. The Stream was born. 



85 



THEOPHILUS 



IX 

THEOPHILUS 

THEOPHILUS is a bird. He perches on a 
stub at our gateway, watching cynically, 
his head cocked slightly to one side, all who pass 
into our enclosure. He has the air of a robin look- 
ing down at a worm; of a bald-headed, very wise 
old sinner who has nothing more to learn; of a vigi- 
lant and faithful guardian of his master's interests; 
of utter detachment and indifference — whichever 
you please. Presumably no one worth his dis- 
pleasure has yet passed our gate, for he has never 
stooped over to rap anybody with his great yellow 
bill. However, he is all ready to do so. Personally 
I treat Theophilus with great respect, for I have 
to pass in and out of that gate several times a day. 

Theophilus has a tremendous yellow bill, some- 
what on the toucan order, only one-storied, and of 
a slight Hebraic cast. It is about three feet long, 
and has a grim curve at the corners of the mouth. 
His head is not quite so long as his bill, and is a 
beautiful sky blue. Was a beautiful sky blue, I 

89 



THE CABIN 

should say, for age has dimmed the colours of his 
youth. A fiery upstanding crest of red completes 
his upper works. 

I regret to state that Theophilus either is hump- 
backed or is sunk in a continual grouch. When 
one possesses blue, red, yellow, and green wings 
with black polka dots, one should be entirely happy. 
Theophilus is up here alone all winter, though, and 
he may be merely humping his back philosophically 
against the snow and the cold. Certainly he keeps 
his tail spread bravely. It is a blue tail, with a 
broad yellow edge to each feather. Blue and red 
legs, a red breast and yellow belly, and yellow claws 
complete Theophilus's chaste and tasteful colour 
scheme. His eye, I regret to state, is small and 
malicious. His attitude, as I have intimated, is 
one of perpetual challenge; and his motto he carries, 
neatly lettered, to test each chance comer. It 
reads: 

DO YOU SPEAK THE LANGUAGE 
OF OUR TRIBE .? 

Mr. Dan Beard is primarily responsible for Theo- 
philus. Some years ago he pubHshed in Outing 
Mapazme full directions and measurements on 
"How to Make a Totem Bird." Theophilus is a 
modification — at long range — of these ideas. Sub- 

90 



THEOPHILUS 

sequently I saw Mr. Beard and made various in- 
quiries. He was much interested in Theophilus, 
but vague in his answers as to how one was supposed 
to solve specified mechanical difficulties of con- 
struction. A certain surprise characterized his 
attitude. You all remember that stage situation 
wherein the alleged wizard is commanded under 
pain of death to prove his powers by making the 
Nile rise. Desperately — but hopelessly — he goes 
through as elaborate mummeries as he can invent. 
In the midst of his performances, in rushes a mes- 
senger. "Sire! The Nile is rising!" he shouts, 
"/i- it.f*'* cries the wizard in stupefied astonishment. 
Well, somehow, Mr. Beard's expression when I told 
him I had built a totem bird on the inspiration — 
not the specifications — of his article, reminded me 
of that wizard. 

"Look here, Beard,** said I finally. "Did you 
ever build that totem bird .?'* 

"Oh, yes," said he; then after a pause, and with a 
quizzical grin — "with a pocket knife. I worked 
out the details, and then just enlarged them.'* 

"Right," said I. "I thought you never tackled 
it with an axe and a cross-cut saw." 

Theophilus was made on smaller measurements 
than the original; but even then his component parts 
weighed each more than I could lift. 

91 



THE CABIN 

In cutting the head and body I had help from the 
three boys of our neighbours, ten miles away. 
After that Billy and I struggled with him as best 
we could. His body and legs went up first. I 
managed to rig a tripod, or "scissors," of three 
poles over the stub, arranged a slide of old boards, 
and thus, an inch or so at a time, got the dismem- 
bered carcass to the top without dropping it off on 
the ground. This was no slight task, and several 
times I literally wrestled with that fowl. Once 
atop, we had further to stand him upright, and 
fasten his feet. The wings we built from shakes and 
some scraps of four-inch boards; and nailed on. 
The tail was of shakes arranged fan-wise. Shakes 
shingle-fashion imitated the feathers of the back. 

But with the head we had the most difficulty. It 
weighed a good deal more than we could handle 
comfortably, and it had to be lifted bodily into place 
from a narrow and insecure footing. This I man- 
aged to accomplish, then called on Billy to steady 
it while I spiked it fast. 

Up to now we had controlled the creation of Theo- 
philus, arranging the details of his anatomy to suit 
ourselves. But at this moment there intervened 
Theophilus's own familiar spirit, his oversoul in the 
universe of grotesques, to determine his final charac- 
ter. Billy held on as tight as she could; and I spiked 

92 




He is like ihe RarKoyles on llie K'reat c;;thedr;ils, Miipropriale and pleasing 



THEOPHILUS 

as carefully as I was able. Yet when we stepped 
back to contemplate the result, lo! it was on crooked. 
Lamentations could have no practical results, for it 
was too late. But when Theophilus's beautiful 
colours were applied, we found that his familiar 
spirit had wrought better than we knew. As the 
paint defined his crest and bill and eyes, he took on 
that half-comical mysterious attitude of listening 
and looking for something coming along the trail, 
which has from that moment set Theophilus miles 
above us in experience and wisdom, and has sum- 
marily taken him from our fashioning hands as a 
thing, and made him an individual entity. I no 
more feel responsible for — or capable of — Theo- 
philus, than I do for the pines or the weird granites 
of Shuteye. I confess he slipped beyond me. The 
method of sawing him, of nailing him, of pegging 
him down I comprehend; but his soul and what he 
means and his general attitude toward me and toward 
life in general I do not understand. He is hardly 
friendly, as is a dog; nor yet inimical in any way — 
perhaps merely aloof, and very superior. 

As you come down the road through the forest, 
and rise gradually to the crest of the gentle slope 
that gives over to our Meadow, Theophilus is the 
first object to rise above the hill-line. In the dis- 
tance and against the sombre magnitude of the 

93 



THE CABIN 

forest, his gay plumage makes a very pleasing spot 
of colour. In spite of the gaudiness of his attire 
and the preposterous proportions of him, he never 
seems out of place. Anywhere else he would be 
utterly and absurdly grotesque; but here, at once 
subdued and thrown into relief by his surroundings, 
he is like the gargoyles on the great cathedrals, 
appropriate and pleasing. But I would feel a lot 
easier, if I only knew whether he really approves 
of us or not. 



9* 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 



X 

ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

I AM very glad I was once somewhat of an 
ornithologist: I am equally glad that I am 
not one now. 

The ornithologist's interest in birds is in direct 
ratio to their rarity. I well remember the first flock 
of Evening Grosbeaks I ever saw. It was in the 
dead of winter and in the height of a wind and snow 
storm. The hard snow cut like knives, and the 
prospect was one of half-buried fences, tossing bared 
branches, and swirhng, blinding flurries sweeping 
a beaten country-side. The birds sat stolidly in 
the tops of two elms by the road, resembling a sort 
of gorgeous upgrowing fruit or cone rather than 
living creatures. With a leap of the heart I recog- 
nized them — by plates and descriptions. I shall 
never forget how slowly and lazily that horse turned 
into a drift where I could tie and blanket him; how 
stiffs the buckles were, and how numb my fingers; 
the difficulty I had in putting together the shotgun! 
The Grosbeaks never moved. So finally I shot a 

97 



THE CABIN 

fine male; and the whole band uttered a concerted 
cheeping, and flashed to the top of another tree 
where they again perched stoHdly. I stufi^ed a little 
pellet of cotton down my specimen's throat; plugged 
his nostrils, wrapped him carefully in a paper cone 
so his feathers would not be ruffled. The same 
performance was repeated. After I had attended 
to this prize, I set myself to observing their habits. 
They had none. Merely they perched in the top 
of that tree, occasionally remarking to each other 
what a fine warm winter day it was, while I slowly 
congealed. After a while, as though at a signal, 
they departed into the swirling snow. 

Save for the identity of the birds and a certain 
quality of weird aloofness, that was not an extraor- 
dinarily interesting or illuminating incident, yet 
in my collecting experience it was a bright particular 
star of a day. 

The recording of three out of the five Connecticut 
Warblers then observed in Michigan was another 
triumph. At that time but a score of this extremely 
rare bird had been seen anywhere, and some doubt 
existed as to whether or not it should be considered 
a hybrid. I do not know its present status. You 
may imagine the prize was too great to risk in ob- 
servation. A lightning recognition, a quick aim, 
and that adventure was over. 

98 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

I have lain belly down for hours straining my 
attention to catch stray glimpses of some infrequent 
migrant, while thousands of the "common'* species 
fairly overran me. Long eager days have I followed 
the lure of a single pair of flashing wings. Who 
cared to bother with Goldfinches, and Redstarts, 
with Maryland Yellow Throats and Towhees when 
the woods held possibilities of such rarities (to our 
region) as the Prothonotary, the fields a faint chance 
that a Dickcissel had wandered so far north ? Spar- 
row Hawks were uninteresting because you could 
get near them, and Cooper's Hawks because you 
could not. 

Yet this is true; that in order to recognize at a 
glance the rarities, you must also know all the 
common species. Else how can you know that every 
feather is not a prize .? And as the common species 
are everywhere at all times, and so constantly to be 
met with, it follows that shortly you will be able to 
identify them at a glance. At one time — the skill 
has departed to a large extent now — I could name 
the genus and often the species of a bird as far as I 
could distinguish the manner of his flight; and the 
exact species of any one of three hundred varieties 
by any portion of his song or note. Perforce I 
learned how to look for birds, where the diff'erent 
species were to be found and whither their habits 

99 



THE CABIN 

of life led them. I had to do this in order to elimi- 
nate the rank and file from my rare and interesting 
objects of pursuit and identification. I am very glad 
I have been something of an ornithologist. 

Three mornings ago a fine male Evening Gros- 
beak flitted out of the pine forest to perch on the 
Cabin ridge-pole. I thought him a remarkably 
handsome person, but stupid. After turning him- 
self around to exhibit fully the wondrous symbolism 
of his plumage, he flew away. In the mean time 
a Junco was earnestly carrying on an interesting 
and animated conversation with a Chickadee and a 
most ridiculous Pigmy Nuthatch. This particular 
Junco comes to see us every morning before we are up. 
We can recognize him, even before we open our eyes, 
by the way he flirts his wings. He belongs to an 
extremely common species indeed; but he is a most 
interesting and companionable person. I concluded 
that I am very glad I am no longer an ornithologist. 
For while a scientist of that brand is interested 
most in the rarities, the rest of us care more for 
the individuals. There are more individuals than 
rarities; therefore we have a much better time. 

These forests are extraordinarily populous with 
birds. In the early morning the woods ring and 
echo and reecho with their songs. One gains the 
impression of a vast multitude busy with its daily 

lOO 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

and accustomed affairs. The joke of it is, those 
affairs go on just as busily when we are not here. 
It is a community we have nothing to do with. We 
are foreigners. When one takes a walk into the 
forest, he counts for nothing. The creatures are 
aware of his presence, and at least doubtful of his 
intentions; therefore they interrupt their occupation, 
their song, their journeys, to keep a bright and sus- 
picious eye on him. Even when he hides long 
enough to restore confidence to the forest at large, 
there are one or two amateur detectives who decline 
to be fooled, and who hover distractingly and silently 
near at hand. The forest modifies itself, ever so 
subtly, to man's domination. 

But when one sleeps out, and in the morning 
merely uncloses his eyes to the dawn, the real busi- 
ness of the forest world goes on full swing as though 
he were not there — as it would were the world of 
men absolutely non-existent. He has shrunk from an 
influence to a mere intelligence. Over him woods 
Hfe passes unruffled, happy, absorbed in its affairs 
utterly unself-conscious, in the manner of the wilds. 

This, to us, is one of the chief delights of sleeping 
out — when we do not have to get up early and 
travel, of course — to watch the early-morning 
occupations of the forest world. 

The Sierra night here is one of the stillest things 

lOI 



THE CABIN 

on earth, not even excepting a calm at sea. The 
wind falls utterly; there seem to be no nocturnal 
songsters, like our old friend the White Throat of 
the Northern forest; the chill of the mountain night 
sends all humming and murmuring insects early 
to bed. There is literally nothing to make a noise, 
save the far murmuring brook, and that is so distant 
as to supply only the faintest wash of monotone to 
the picture of Night. An occasional owl or coyote, 
the horses moving in the meadow, the tinkle of 
Flapjack's sweet-toned bell, actually break the silence, 
sometimes in an almost startling manner. The tall 
trees are very motionless and solemn and black. 
So still are they that almost it seems the stillness of 
some tension, as though their heaven-pointing tips 
conveyed some silent invisible fluid of virtue straight 
up from the overcharged earth, as a candle flame 
sometimes stands unwavering in its upward flow of 
abundant heat. To a city dweller sleeping out for 
the first time in these forests, the night is sometimes 
terrifying, not from apprehension of wild beasts or 
falling limbs or any other material danger, but 
from the subtle big awe and mystery of something 
intangible he cannot understand. 

On no other forest with which I am acquainted 
does the enchantment lie so heavy. It is as though 
the lifting of the last broad sunray across Shuteye 

lOZ 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

was as the lifting of a golden wand. Somewhere 
in the depths of the woodland is the Sleeping Prin- 
cess; and all the trees and bushes, the thickets, the 
birds and the creatures have been stricken to im- 
mobihty pending her awakening. Especially is this 
illusion near to the truth when the moon sails the 
heavens. Down through the still darkness of forest 
aisles you look to a little glade all of most beautiful 
and delicate frostwork. From blackness projects 
a single branch of silver. Long shadows lie im- 
mobile across openings of light. But these shadows, 
and the trunks of trees, and even the silhouettes 
seen against the moon are not of the blackness of 
starlit nights. Across them all is a milky lucent 
veil. This is a new forest, a new world into which 
you have graciously been permitted to wander. 
The grosser substance of the material universe has 
been magicked away, leaving the wonderful form- 
soul of them to stand until a touch shall crumble 
them to a pinch of white moon-dust. You move 
by sufferance, the only noisy, blundering, restless 
creature in the world. And the great silence and 
stillness rebuke you. 

There are a few familiars to the great magician 
who are allowed certain privileges of the night. Of 
these the Owls are the most remarkable — is not the 
magician always attended by an owl or so ^ The 

103 



THE CABIN 

big Horned Owls with their booming whooy whoo^ 
whoo, are in tune with the solemnity of an earth 
fallen under enchantment. But there is another 
species — the Short-eared Owl — that represents well 
the diabolical side popularly attributed to all necro- 
mancy. He clucks, he shrieks, he laughs, he shouts 
insultingly and sardonically. The woods are full 
of his ribald jeerings. Like the coyotes, two make 
racket enough for a dozen. When one of these irrev- 
erent imps breaks loose among the echoes of a forest 
fallen utterly silent, it seems that the farthermost 
stars must awaken and give ear. Yet when the row 
is all over, you find that not the tiniest bird, not the 
smallest leaf has been aroused from the deep trance. 
The imps have beaten in vain against that supernal 
calm. All they have succeeded in accomplishing is 
to render frantic Brudder Bones, but as Brudder 
Bones is only a pink-eyed, white bull pup seven 
months old, his judgment does not count for much. 
To the west the trees of our forest are apparently 
of almost an equal height. Yet there is one, far 
distant, that, either because it stands directly op- 
posite a chance opening in the east, or because it 
really is taller than its neighbours, is bathed to its 
waist in golden sunlight before any of the others 
have caught a single ray. Therefore it is known as 
the Dawn Tree. 

104 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

By the Dawn Tree we know that it is time to get 
up. And under the Dawn Tree, we suspect, Hes 
the Sleeping Princess, for with the touch of morning 
on its crest the forest stirs. Birds chirp, a tiny 
breeze murmurs through the highest tops, certain 
spiders swing perilously from silvery cables, the bees 
hum by on their way to the flower gardens of the 
meadows. And far up, so high that barely we can 
make them out, silver-flashing birds flutter across 
the emptiness of blue ether, like the spirits of morn- 
ing out of the east. 

Inch by inch the sunlight descends, until the forest 
is bathed in light, every aisle and thicket of it, a 
golden green light seen at no other time of day. 
Then indeed the life of the woodland is at high tide. 
All the insects are out, and the birds after them. 
Everything with a voice has something to say, and 
takes time to say it. The freshness of morning is in the 
air, and the exhilaration of a brand-new untried day. 

In the complicated bird-life of the forest are many 
planes and stories. Some dwell entirely in the tip- 
tops of the trees, rarely descending below the level 
of the uppermost branches. Others inhabit the 
mid-regions; while still a third class divide their 
time between the lower limbs and the brush. Be- 
sides all these are the distinctly ground-dwellers, 
such as the Quail and the Towhee families. 

los 



THE CABIN 

Birds are in one respect a remarkably complacent 
race. Each species has its own way of doing things, 
from which it never varies, no matter how over- 
whelmingly unanimous the example set by other 
species all around it. And the examples are numer- 
ous enough and close enough, one would think, to 
tempt at least the youngest and most enterprising 
to try a new way of doing things, if only to see how 
it seems. But no; the conduct of life has been 
settled ages ago, there remains only the pleasant 
task of filling the frame with as much brightness 
and joyous colour as possible. "No," says young 
Master Thrush, " singing to the new risen sun from 
the very tip of a big fir may be very pleasant, and 
may do very well for Robins; but none of us would 
think of it for a moment! And Magnolia Warblers 
are undoubtedly very worthy people; but none of 
our set ever wears a yellow spot on the rump." 
Among human beings extreme conservatism usually 
means also a gloomy and cheerless outlook on life. 
Here are creatures more settled in their ways than 
the Chinese themselves, yet able to preserve also a 
free and joyous spirit. 

On this account our Robins amuse us immensely. 
They are of course accustomed by tradition im- 
memorial to close-clipped green lawns, well wa- 
tered, v/ith shade trees, conservatories, vines, gravel 

io6 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

drives, angleworms, and clipped hedges. In those 
surroundings the self-respecting Robin can do him- 
self justice. We all know how well he lives up to 
his station in life — three or four proud hops for- 
ward, breast swelled, head back, aspect noble; the 
ostentatious and theatrical cocking of the head side- 
wise over a wormy-looking spot; the sudden dab, 
the braced legs, the reluctant worm, the triumphant 
pose as the victim comes away. It is as well done 
as is the knee action of the horses brought to the 
door. Not every Robin can have his setting as 
elaborate as he might wish, but at least he has reason 
to expect something in the way of a well-kept sward. 
Up here there are no lawn-mowers, no lawn, no 
angleworms, no nothing. We cannot support a 
single Robin in the style to which he has been ac- 
customed. Nevertheless, our Robins, in place of 
going seedy and losing interest, as so many people 
do in the circumstances, make the best of it. Not 
a ceremony is omitted. What matter that the lawn is 
only the meadow grass cropped down by the horses ? 
it is emerald green; what matter if there are no 
angleworms at all ? one can attitudinize just as care- 
fully over any old doodlebug. Our Robins hold 
as rigidly to the good-form of angleworming as any 
foxhunter to the rules of the game, even when the 
prosaic aniseed replaces the living quarry. I 

107 



THE CABIN 

respect the Robins for that, and I must confess that 
their touching efforts to make our front yard look 
aristocratic sometimes almost succeed. 

We have also a very busy and friendly inhabitant 
of our bushes next the house that we call the Plain- 
tive Bird. This is because of his note, which com- 
plains gently and plaintively of something that has 
gone wrong. The grievance is evidentl}/ of long 
standing, for the tone has become just a trifle queru- 
lous. Perhaps it is an ancestral outrage, the memory 
of which has become traditional and the protest 
against which is a family duty, for the bird himself 
is as lively and cheerful as you please. He is es- 
pecially partial to the low-growing chinquapins, 
and when he is occupied in stirring up the peace of 
that thicket, he seems to pervade it from one end 
to the other. He scratches among the leaves in 
great, two-handed swoops that send things flying. 
Then he hops out to the edge, cocks one merry black 
eye up at us, voices his plaintive we-o-wee, and 
examines to see what he has unearthed. Generally 
that proves to be nothing. He does a lot of vigorous 
scratching for meagre results, but he seems to 
enjoy it, and he is certainly a friendly and fearless 
person. 

With him are the Purple Finches, hundreds of them. 
The salted clay of our chimney possesses a fascination 

1 08 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

for them. At any time of day we can flush a dozen 
or so by coming around the corner on them suddenly. 
They scurry away with a great fluttering of wings, 
but if we stand quite still, even for ten seconds, 
back the bravest venture, their crimson head- 
feathers ruffled, their eyes upon us, but their eager 
little bills at work on our precious structure. They 
are very tiny people, and weak, and the chimney 
is solid, but I sometimes think they will in the course 
of years finish by carrying oflP our fireplace piece- 
meal. They love, in the early morning, to perch on 
the straight topmost finger of the giant firs, there 
to enjoy the first sun, and occasionally to favour us 
with their sweet and rambling warble. 

Hardly second to these two in their claim on a 
semi-domesticity are the Juncos, or snowbirds. 
They and their cheerful flirtings in and out, the 
neatness of their costume with its black muffler 
and white waistcoat, and the two flashing white 
feathers of their tails are so familiar a feature of 
our meadow that we should miss the azaleas no 
more than them. 

These three — the Purple Finches, the Plaintive 
Birds, and the Juncos — stand to us instead of 
domestic fowls. They live always inside our fence, 
they never wander far abroad, and they are always 
to be found. The other birds dwell aloof, or cruise 

109 



THE CABIN 

it here and there in the forest, or drop in on us 
occasionally for a friendly visit and gossip. 

Of such the most amusing are the independent, 
swashbuckling bands of Nuthatches and Chickadees, 
For an hour or so after sunrise you will have no 
indication whatever of their existence. Then far 
off in the woods you become aware of a voice like 
the blowing of hundreds of elfin tin trumpets. The 
sound comes nearer; is heard to be intermingled 
with clear modulated whistles and the distinctive 
chick-a-dee-dee-dee of that small and independent 
individual. Suddenly every tree is covered with 
comical, scow-built, tiny birds, moving busily — 
and impartially — up, down, or around the trunks; 
every twig is quivering with the weight of bright- 
eyed, quick, eager little Chickadees, upside down, 
right side up, seeking eagerly,and minutely every pos- 
sibility that might conceal an addition to breakfast. 
The host sweeps by you as though you did not exist. 
The little fellows are friendly enough — there is 
nothing scornful or exclusive in their attitude, as 
there is in that of the Stellar Jay for example — but 
they haven't time for you. You have no trunk to 
run up and down, no twigs from which to balance. 
They are not the slightest bit afraid of you. Merely 
they close about you, and move on. One moment 
the trees are swarming with bewildering life; the 

no 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

next, they are empty. Receding in the distance you 
hear the chorus of toot-toot-toot, chick-a-dee-dee-deey 
dear me, and the harsh squawking of the jays who 
seem to delight in acting the part of derisive camp 
followers to this elfin army. 

Other free spirits of the woods are the Wood- 
peckers. They range as the mood strikes them, 
swooping in long curved flight, uttering loud and 
triumphant cries. From the tops of dead trees 
they beat out a long roll in the sheer joy of noise; 
on half-decayed logs they deliver the purposeful, 
spaced, heavy blows of the workman; they romp 
around and around tree-trunks in an ascending 
spiral, chasing each other in an ecstasy of play. Like 
noisy schoolboys, they break all the solemnities. 
No hush of evening or languor of noon is proof 
against their rattling or their sonorous weechery 
weecher! At long intervals the king of them all 
passes our way royally, the great Pileated Wood- 
pecker, big as a hawk, with his black, white-striped 
body and his flaming, upstanding red crest. I 
imagine he looks on Theophilus, the totem bird, as 
some sort of distant relative. He retreats with 
dignity, but he retreats, and if we are to observe 
him, it must be from the passive standpoint of the 
proverbial "bump on a log." 

Before getting up in the morning, we seize many 

III 



THE CABIN 

such opportunities for close observation. Our camp 
blanket is red, and to this day a certain Humming- 
bird is hoping yet to solve the sweetness of what he 
thinks to be a gorgeous and gigantic flower. We 
hear the swift darting hum of the little creature, 
followed by the deeper tone as he hovers suspended. 
There he balances, sometimes not a foot from our 
faces, gazing intently on that great patch of red. 

The Chipmunks, too, tiny fellows not over a quarter 
the size of the Eastern species, consider the bed 
somewhat of a dare. Its base is a flake of hay 
embezzled from the horses' late-autumn supply, 
and that forms the attraction for the little squirrels. 
They consume ten minutes screwing up their cour- 
age, dart fearfully under the edge of the canvas, 
reappear carrying a head of barley, perch on the 
headboard to eat it, one beady black eye comically 
aslant at us. It is exceedingly interesting to see 
thus such delicately fashioned woods creatures at 
such very close range. 

To the larger Pine Squirrels, however, we are to 
be considered in the light of an inexcusable outrage. 
A great tree-trunk descends to the head of our bed, 
and down this every morning a Pine Squirrel would 
venture, to tell us what he thought of us. He squatted 
quite flat behind, raised himself slightly on his fore- 
paws, and chattered nervously. Every moment 

112 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

or so he would jerk his tail and advance another foot 
or so down the tree. The nearer he got, the shorter 
his descents, the jerkier his tail, and the louder his 
scoldings. Finally the awful proximity would break 
down his nerve-sustained courage. With a shriek 
of released terror he would turn and skitter madly 
to the top of the tree, gibbering as though pursued 
by ten thousand devils. Once in safety from his 
imaginary dangers, he congratulated himself for 
some time in a low voice, and examined his precious 
tail to see if it had sustained any damage. Gradually 
his indignation mounted. He looked down and 
saw us still there. After a minute longer of doubt, 
he would decide to try it again. 

Between the dogs and the three kinds of squirrels 
common about our Cabin, is perpetual war. By 
experience each knows accurately how far it can be 
adventured. Apparently bold Chipmunks perch 
saucily within a few feet of the dogs; the latter, 
beyond a quiver of the nostrils, betray scant interest. 
They know, and the Chipmunk knows, that the 
way of escape is from that point infallible. Ap- 
parently prudent Douglas Squirrels appear in an 
opening fifty yards away; instantly with eager whines 
the dogs tear away in a scrambHng pursuit. Some- 
times they butt their noses against the tree up which, 
with terrified chatterings, Mr. Douglas has just 

"3 



THE CABIN 

managed to escape. Sometimes he loses his life. 
It is a fair game, and the nature of a dog is to hunt. 
We would not be justified in interference. Also 
such incidents do not seem to discourage the squir- 
rels in the least. Instantly we appear, the word 
goes about through the woodland that the Dis- 
pensors of Favours are returned accompanied by 
their Dragons. In the squirrel mind, evidently, 
one consideration far outbalances the other, for 
within a few days ten of the little animals appear 
where before was but one. 

They are easily tamed, but we have never at- 
tempted especially to gain their confidence. It 
would not be fair. California John was once telling 
us of a fawn that came every morning to the head of 
his meadow to feed among the domestic animals. 

"I believe you could tame him!" cried Billy. 
"Why don't you try.?" 

"Oh, he'd gentle all right," replied CaUfornia 
John, " but, ma'am, I don't believe in gentling 
no wild critter whatever that I can't take care of. It 
just makes it easy for the first fellow with a gun or 
claws that comes along." 

The Mountain Quail, beautiful helmeted and 
plumed birds, found our clearing good during all of 
one season. Since then they have disappeared, not 
only from our meadow, but from our ridge. I sup- 

114 



ON BIRDS AND LIVING THINGS 

pose the feed is better somewhere else. Animals 
and birds like to frequent the same places, but it is 
a mistake to suppose that they necessarily confine 
themselves to one locality. I believe they have 
various estates which they inhabit as the fancy 
strikes them — a Watering Place on Whiskey Ridge; 
a Cone Forest on Pine Ridge; a Pifion Preserve on 
Goat Mountain, and so on. On a year when cones 
are scarce with us, the squirrels desert us almost 
completely, and we hear of them on the mountains 
away across the tremendous gorge of the Joaquin. 
We are sorry to lose the Mountain Quail, and hope 
some year they will come back to take the shutters 
down here. It was great fun to see the well-groomed, 
sleek, anxious mothers marshalling the ranks of 
their scurrying, comical, small progeny. 



"5 



THE MILL 



XI 

THE MILL 

THERE is a sawmill two miles distant, over 
near the bluffs. It growls away to itself, 
and pretends it is wonderfully big and important, 
whereas it is in reality a very little mill indeed. For 
twenty-five years it has been amusing the forest by 
biting at her fringes. Two million feet a year is 
considered pretty good.^" It sends its lumber out 
by teams consisting of from six to ten span of horses 
and mules, a journey of three days. The driver 
rides one of his wheel horses, and for twelve hours 
a day is lost in thick clouds of dust. At the mill 
itself one circular saw keeps as busy as it can — when 
it is in working order; two teams of mules haul the 
large logs in from the woods; and a donkey engine 
yanks the timbers from the bed to which they have 
fallen. The mill-hands are mostly the sons of small 
ranchers, young mountaineers, and the like. The 
woodsmen, experts with axe and saw, have, some 
of them, drifted out from the pines of Michigan and 

* A modern plant cuts fifty or sixty million a year. 

119 



THE CABIN 

Wisconsin. They work hard, as all woodsmen do, 
and have no time for visiting. Two miles in the 
mountains would be a new measure of distance to a 
motorist, say. We see the twenty or thirty of the 
mill crew only when we visit the scene of their 
work. They are non-existent in our life. 

This general rule falls to the ground in the case of 
a few, however. Some, by virtue of especial char- 
acter, have grown to be our friends. 

The master sawyer, for example. All day he 
stands by his levers, sending the log carriage back 
and forth, turning the log over by means of the 
nigger hooks, gauging accurately how best to get the 
most good lumber from the material. Each log 
is a problem by itself. For a great many summers 
his eyes have followed the incessant movement 
before them, until they have grown steady with a 
tired abstraction. When we ride over to the mill 
after our letters, we always go in to see the sawyer. 
The rattle of the machinery and the exultant cres- 
cendo shriek of the saw fill all the possibilities of 
sound. We touch him on the shoulder and let him 
know we are there. He grins cordially at us; we 
grin cordially back at him. Perhaps we shriek a 
word or two at the top of our lungs. That is all, 
but we go away feeling we have had quite a satis- 
factory visit. This sawyer has lived all his life in 

1 20 



THE MILL 

the mountains — in fact, the man who wrought at 
our meadow so many years before bore his name. 
He has property, and a family, and a slow benevo- 
lent patience that has taken care of every forlorn and 
incompetent relative, in direct defiance of his own 
interests and those of his boys. In repose his face 
has a Lincolnian sadness, but when he smiles it 
twinkles all over like sun on broken water. He 
possesses a fiddle on which he plays jiggy, foot- 
tapping things. His home is down the mountain 
at the Forks. There he often furnishes the music 
for some of the dances. The quadrilles are es- 
pecially grand, for then the musician, both eyes 
closed, calls out. No one knows what he says, or 
what it all has to do with the figures; and no one 
cares. Each remark is jerked out with an accom- 
panying strong sweep of the bow and swaying of 
the body. It is all about "honey!'* — " Pig'n a 
corn!" "Po-liteness!" "Swing 'round," "Go 
down, Moses!'* "'Coon up a plum tree!'* and 
various inarticulate but inspiring sounds. 

"Uncle Charley" has a wife and four half-grown 
boys. Every once in a while some or all of them take 
the long ride up the mountain to see us. The boys 
patiently try to catch chipmunks, or go swimming, 
or generally pop around the woods. The grown- 
ups settle down for a good talk. The mountain 

121 



THE CABIN 

people are exceedingly interesting. They live a 
life that depends more than the common on its in- 
dividual resource; and at the same time the better 
class of them possess a remarkably high standard 
of taste and education. Books, and good ones, are 
abundant. In addition are certain qualities of 
hospitality, the breadth of view^ incidental to the 
m.eeting of many types on a plane of equality, and 
independence in the manner of thinking. I like 
the mountain people. 

For here you must know all your neighbours for 
fifty miles about. In more crowded centres one picks 
and chooses even his most superficial acquaintance- 
ships. As a consequence certain classes of men fall 
outside your experience completely, and to that 
extent your knowledge and sympathies are limited. 

But a sparsely settled region is different. The 
dweller therein has full opportunity to know all his 
microcosmos. He knows Uncle Charley's folks, 
with their more refined tastes; he is on intimate 
terms with the Forest Supervisor's people of college 
education and sweet and gentle breeding; he comes 
in contact with the Washington men — the in- 
spectors, timber experts, grazing men, all the num- 
berless technical experts; he meets and talks with 
tourists and campers of all classes on their way to 
the higher peaks. In addition he knows all about 

122 



THE MILL 

his other neighbours; and as any society, no matter 
how sparse, possesses in itself the elements of a 
community, he is in contact with all classes, from 
the debased caterpillar-eating Indians at the ranch- 
eria, through the half-breeds, and on up past the 
"white trash," to the different independent, semi- 
patriarchal and always individual households scat- 
tered through the Hills. If Smith's colt dies of 
rattlesnake bite, it is a matter of personal interest; 
if Jones's son is getting to hang around the saloon 
at the Corners, you must do something about it. 
Public opinion is nowhere so concretely expressed 
nor so powerful in affecting general attitude as in 
the mountains; — nor so powerless to affect in- 
dividual attitude. A man easily works out his 
conduct of life — whether for good or evil — and 
lives by it "spite of hell or high water." 

And to a large extent he is allowed to do so. Men 
are taken objectively in the mountains. That is 
to say, their idiosyncrasies in the manner of doing 
things or of looking at things are taken as so many 
unchangeable, natural phenomena. One adjusts 
himself to them just exactly as he would take into 
consideration the sets of current in swimming a horse 
across a stream. The more introspective peoples 
are apt to ask themselves whys and wherefores. 

"How could Jones think and do so and so!" we 
123 



THE CABIN 

cry. "I should think a man with a grain of sense 
would have seen it! I can't understand how a man 
gets at feeling the way he does!'* 

So we go on worrying ourselves with the recon- 
struction of Jones. 

The mountaineer, on the other hand, explains 
everything by saying that that's the way Jones does, 
and lets it go, and forgets it. As well try to explain 
why Jones has a sharp nose. The attitude is at 
once a result of and conducive to the fullest ex- 
pression of individualism. 

From the mill also we draw our friend the hunter. 
He stays on the mountain all the year around. In 
winter, when the snows come, he looks after the 
mill's property — -shovels snow oflP roofs and gener- 
ally keeps things in repair. Constantly he deludes 
himself that he is going to quit and go down to the 
valley. He never does. He lives high up on a 
rocky knoll. It is facetiously fortified with old 
pieces of pipe stuck out at all angles to represent 
cannon. When you get up there, you are met by 
a cynical 'coon at the end of a chain. He retires 
promptly to the inner recesses of his kennel. A 
moment later you find yourself in a really comfort- 
able and clean cabin. It is decorated with litho- 
graphed calendars, skins, deer's antlers and Indian 
baskets. The latter are our hunter's specialty, 

124 



THE MILL 

and he will wax enthusiastic for you over the 
variation in a border pattern. 

About once a week he comes over to see us, gener- 
ally armed with rifle and revolver. He perches on 
the steps for an hour, gravely exchanges news as to 
game seen during the week, confides to us as to 
where and by whom deer have been killed, relates 
a few trapping incidents that curl Billy up inside, 
declines to stay to a meal, and departs. Generally 
he brings us in our mail by way of excuse. Each 
spring when we return, he tells us carefully just how 
the winter has been. Quite of his own volition he 
snowshoes over occasionally to see how the Cabin is 
getting on. Two years ago, he says, it was buried 
to the ridge-pole, and only the tip of the smoke-pipe 
was sticking out. 

Then there were, until this year, the Stout broth- 
ers. We met the first as he was "nicking" a big 
sugar pine. He is one of those very tall, very slender 
mountaineers with the strength and spring of whale- 
bone in his long, slim body. His brothers are like 
him. They are musicians. One blows through 
a cornet, one twangs a guitar, the other scrapes a 
fiddle. One evening they packed all these things 
on their backs, collected Uncle Charley and his 
instrument, and walked over after dark for a grand 
musical pow-wow. Uncle Charley's wife, all her 

12S 



THE CABIN 

boys, her adopted Indian girl, and three young 
people who were staying with her were already oc- 
cupying the Guest Camp above the Cabin, under 
the trees. We built a roaring camp-fire, uncased 
the instruments, and 

But let us go back two days. It was noon, and I 
had walked over to the mill to post some letters. 
With me were Tuxana and Rattler, the latter at that 
time six months old. The old lady was padding 
along at my heels as usual, but the puppy, gangle- 
legged and ridiculous, was far afield investigating 
everything. Naturally, when we approached the 
mill, the mill dogs, seven in number, of various and 
astonishing mongrelism, rushed forth. As natur- 
ally Rattler fled for the tall timber. This aroused 
Tuxana. No one had paid any attention to her, 
but the outrage of seven against the one youngster 
was too much for her. Without saying a word, she 
shot out from behind me and hurled herself, like a 
missile from a catapult, upon the histrionic seven. 

Tuxana's usual method of fighting is to clamp 
and hang on. It is at once simple and eflfective, 
for Tuxana has a face like a catfish. But to-day, 
against numbers, she shifted her tactics. In about 
a minute she had the redoubtable seven licked to a 
standstill. Some fled with shrieks, some lay down 
and held all four feet in the air as token of submis- 

126 



THE MILL 

sion, some crawled under buildings. The last one 
she tackled, however, put up more of a fight, and 
him she proceeded to slaughter in approved fashion. 
We hauled her off, with some difficulty, and I led 
her around by my belt strap until her bristles had 
gone down. For this energetic combat was Tuxana 
much admired. 

On the evening of our projected camp-fire music 
that last antagonist had the bad taste and judgment 
to follow the Stout boys over to our camp; and they 
had not noticed it. Here was Tuxana's chance. 
She is the most peaceful old girl that ever wagged a 
tail, but a personal enemy she never forgets. Rid- 
ing along the roads at home we pass fifty dogs to 
which Tuxana pays not the compliment of a side 
glance. Then her ears cock forward, her hair 
bristles, her eyes fix on a canine away off in the 
distance. She is off with her tearing scramble. 
And no matter how far away that dog is, when he 
sees Tuxana coming he departs rapidly. 

So, no sooner was the orchestra tuned up than the 
most unholy row broke out from the woods. We 
all ran out to see what was the matter. Tuxana 
had missed the throat hold for which she always 
tries, but had clamped firmly on the dog's flank. 
There she hung on, biting deeper every instant. 
The dog, frantic with fear and pain, was snapping 

127 



THE CABIN 

blindly in all directions. When the men tried to 
allay the battle, they made the mistake of reaching 
for Tuxana. Thereupon the other dog, his fore 
quarters threshing in all directions like the head of 
a scotched snake, bit rapidly and accurately. In 
six seconds the three Stout boys and Uncle Charley 
had from two to five bites apiece. Then somebody 
grabbed the mill dog by the neck. When we finally 
got Tuxana away, she carried with her a substantial 
piece of that luckless canine. 

Billy opened her medicine case, and the victims 
lined up in a row as though they wanted to buy 
tickets for some popular success. Bandage rolls, 
calendula, and peroxide were consumed in vast 
quantities. Billy had a chance to try her skill. 

Billy, inspired with the idea of acquiring knowl- 
edge useful to the Trail, once joined two classes — 
First Aid to the Injured, and Cooking. In the 
former she learned how to distinguish drunkenness 
from apoplexy. In the second she gained some 
skill in the construction of Charlotte Russe and 
Floating Island. Unfortunately in the high country 
we have not yet run across anybody lying by the 
trail — bottles are not easily transported in quantity 
on a pack-horse. Neither have we arrived at a 
yearning for such desserts contemporaneous with 
a possession of eggs and milk. A family doctor 

128 



THE MILL 

showed her how to bandage, however; and now 
the knowledge came in very handy. She turned out 
a good, workmanlike job, and her four patients were 
wound to the elbows. But we hadn't enough good 
fingers among us to make a single note of music. 

The mill is our point of touch with the world 
outside. Through it we get our mail, occasionally. 
Its teamsters are very good to us in the matter of 
tucking in a box or so of supplies when they come 
up the mountain empty. It is quite an adventure 
to take Flapjack and go over to the mill. We never 
know what we are going to find. Uncle Charley's 
wife may have sent us a little sweet corn, or some 
eggs, or a watermelon; there may be letters or a 
magazine or so; or possibly some precious article 
we sent for so long ago that we have utterly forgotten 
it turns up at last as a pleasant surprise. Or again the 
total results of a long journey through the woods may 
be a circular and two unreceipted bills from home. 

This year the mill has sawed its last in the little 
clearing where it has lived for twenty-five years. It 
has made a tiny hole in the forest, and has left some 
ugly debris in its slashings. But even where it cut 
tw^o years ago, the young trees are springing thick. 
The acreage of its cut is so small that there is not 
much danger of fire, and if fire is kept out, the 
forest will soon reestablish itself. 

129 



ON STRANGERS 



XII 

ON STRANGERS 

WHENEVER you see a dust through the trees, 
you look first to make sure it is not raised 
by stray cattle. Then when you are certain of your 
horse and man, you start a fire in the Httle stove. 
That is an invariable rule in the mountains. 

The logic is simple, unanswerable, and correct. 
The presence of the man argues that he has ridden 
from some distant point, for here all points are more 
or less distant; and the fact in turn proves that some- 
what of exercise and space of time have intervened 
since last he has eaten. Therefore, no matter 
what the time of day, you feed him. It works out 
like a mathematical formula. 

Similarly in other camps, after you have chatted 
for a few moments, some one will slip quietly away. 
A sound of splitting crackles, a thin, fragrant smoke 
odour enters your nostrils. After an interval there 
is brought to you a lunch to which your attention is 
invited. The lunch varies from beans on a tin plate 
and rank coffee in a tin cup, to tea and yeast-bread, 

133 



THE CABIN 

and gooseberry jelly and layer cake, according to 
whose camp you may happen to be in. But its 
welcome is the same, and you find yourself respond- 
ing avidly at ten o'clock in the morning to the cordial 
invitation, "eat hearty." Such is mountain hos- 
pitality and mountain convention. It is as much a 
matter of course as the urban ring at the door bell, and 
is no more to be omitted than the offer of a chair. 

" Light and rest yo' hat " ; "Eat hearty " ; " Take 
care of yoreself." These three speeches can cover 
the entire gamut of good-fellowship — greeting, 
entertainment, and good-bye. 

It must be repeated; one knows fewer people in 
the wilderness, but he knows them better. He has 
leisure to walk all around them, to appraise them, 
sound their depths,and make up his mind about them. 
In crowded centres one is apt to know types and 
the examples thereof; here one knows individuals. 

Perhaps a little more philosophy might be per- 
mitted. The city has certain work to be done — 
street-cars to drive, elevators to run, horses to con- 
duct, papers to sell, shirts to make. To accom- 
plish it she possesses millions of hands. A slight 
push from each pair will accomplish the task. So 
we see men whose vitality is low, whose vices are 
many, whose working days are few, whose capac- 
ities are scant, filling well enough necessary in- 

134 



ON STRANGERS 

dustrial positions. A man can get drunk, sober up, 
and still wash windows and sweep the office. The 
headache is uncomfortable; the task nevertheless 
is done. That is because it is a single task, a simple 
task, an invariable task. For all other needs the 
city has other hands. A feeble push at the wheel is 
unavailing. Multiplied by a million, the wheel turns. 

So we constantly see wrecks of men, sodden with 
drink, eaten with disease, enervated with vice, tak- 
ing somehow their small part in the life of the city, 
and receiving therefrom their living, such as it is. 
The city makes them what they are, but it permits 
them at least to subsist. Elsewhere they would not 
last a week. When they drop, at the end of a greater 
or lesser period of efficiency, there are plenty of 
others to take their places. The triumphant vitality 
of the city is unlowered. Its mighty works go on, 
so that in ten years it has built, cleansed, developed 
wonderful and titanic things. But the average 
vitality and efficiency of its individuals are through- 
out very low. 

In a new country, on the other hand, a man must 
be strong, healthy, and self-reliant. It is not suffi- 
cient that he acquire the ability to punch holes, 
certain that for all time the man next — or one like 
him — will stick in the rivet, and the man beyond 
tap with the hammer. Such partial activities would 

135 



THE CABIN 

here avail him little. He is not a finger or an arm 
or an eye or any other single member of an industrial 
body; he is the industrial body itself. If he wants 
a thing riveted, he must know how to rivet. 

And since riveting is not the only thing necessary 
to life, he must possess reserves of vitality beyond 
the tap of the hammer. He must be healthy, free 
from the corroding vices. When he loses his vigour, 
he loses his chance. His community, scattered, 
miserly of men, needs his whole ability. It is not 
satisfied with part, and if he deliberately withholds 
himself, it soon dispenses with him entirely. 

Of course it would be a stupid argument that 
would claim all virtue for the country. That is not 
the purpose of this homily. The foregoing remarks 
may be more clearly understood when you focus 
them in this manner: 

In settled communities it is of course both im- 
possible and undesirable to welcome all comers. 
Sheer weight of numbers would preclude acquaint- 
ance with everybody, even were that desirable. As 
a matter of fact, it is not. The exceptional human- 
itarian may see some interest in the Jones-Brown- 
Robinson flat-dwellers or commuters with their 
narrow, stuffy interests, their rubber plants, their 
small circle of friends, and their appalling boredom. 
Most of us are thoroughly satiated after the first 

136 



ON STRANGERS 

dreary meeting. We prefer to pick our friends 
according to our tastes, and we do so. Thus we 
have an enjoyable time, but we are apt to narrow 
our sympathies. 

Out of civilization, however, it is possible to meet 
and enjoy every passer-by. Some are more in- 
teresting than others. And some are dangerously 
close to being utter reprobates and scalawags. But 
one and all are vital, otherwise they would not 
exist. In the course of a season one meets the com- 
ponents of a social cosmos, at close range, sym- 
pathetically, on a common ground of equahty. 
Thus one acquires several new points of view. Once 
in Arizona, while following the chuck-wagon for 
the experience, Billy was quite taken with the 
appearance, the manner, and the conversation of 
one of the cowboys. After she got to know him 
quite well, we informed her of the known fact that 
he was a cattle rustler and train robber. Since then 
she has had a modified though somewhat puzzled 
opinion of hold-ups. 

Again, we were camped on an old forgotten trail 
above one of the tremendous caiions of the Sierra 
Nevada. About evening a man with two pack 
animals drifted in and made camp. His being there 
puzzled me. The trail had long since been super- 
seded by another several miles shorter. No way 

137 



THE CABIN 

led from the upper canon through this particular 
meadow. Unless he had made a deliberate detour, 
I could not imagine why he had hit that old trail. 
Voicing these cogitations to Billy, she offered an 
easy solution. 

"Go over and ask him," said she. 

"And perhaps he has a band of sheep trespassing 
up in the ledges — or a prospect this side the mina- 
rets — or some other good reason. It isn't polite 
to ask people things,'* I replied. 

"Oh, dear!" lamented Billy," I don't think I'll ever 
get used to this Western watch-the-other-fellow- 
to-see-if-he's-going-to-hit-you- first way. Now I 
should have asked him straight out, if I were a man." 

"And got into trouble," said I. 

For it most decidedly is not polite to ask a man his 
business or where he is from. When a stranger shows 
up out ofa howling wilderness, a great desire fills your 
soul to know all about him, and whence he comes, 
and how far it is, and whether the trail is rough, 
and whether he's had fishing, or killed a deer, and 
all the rest of it. That is natural. But you must not. 

And therefore your powers of observation grow 
on you. No detail of equipment escapes your eye. 
Sherlock Holmes would have enjoyed comparing 
notes with a good Westerner. One sizes up his man 
and his outfit and draws his conclusions, silently. 

138 



ON STRANGERS 

If there is no reason for concealment, a few logs of 
wood blazing and an ounce of tobacco glowing will 
bring the fact out. Our man had heard that the old 
trail existed, and he thought he'd try it — that was all. 

Occasionally it is exceedingly difficult to keep 
"tongues off." Billy, Wes and I were camped near 
the main crest. We were about as far from rail- 
roads, towns, and settlements as it is physically 
possible to get. At sundown a horseman rode in. 

"How's chances for feeding my horse and me?'* 
he asked. 

"There's the meadow," said I, "and I guess we 
can manage to rustle you a little grub." 

He unsaddled and turned his horse loose, joined 
us at supper and breakfast, resaddled, and departed. 

There was nothing unusual in that. But note 
this: he had no blankets, no grub, no slicker, not 
even a tin cup. He was at least four days* ride 
from the nearest house. Moreover, he was heavily 
armed with a carbine and two Colts. 

We talked on indifferent subjects all the evening. 
He made no mention of his errand or where he was 
from, or how he subsisted, or whither he was going. 
So we did not ask. In the morning he caught up 
his horse, saddled him, and approached me. 

"How much.?" he inquired lacoaically, thrusting 
his hand in his pocket. 

139 



THE CABIN 

"Nothing." 

"You're the first folks I've seen that didn't take 
all the traffic would bear," said he, drawing his hand 
out again. "Them trout tasted pretty good." 

"You must have been in the valley," I suggested, 
for I knew mountain hospitality too well to suspect it, 

"I have," said he grimly, " — and then some." 
He looked up at me keenly. "That's where I ate 
last, three days back." 

While he was tightening his cinch preparatory 
to departure, he told me his story in little jerks. 
Evidently he had been sizing us up ever since the 
first moment he had hit our camp. 

He was a sheriiF, from Goldfields, in pursuit of 
two horse-thieves. He had left at a moment's notice, 
without preparation. The trail had led him over 
the desert, one hundred and ten miles of it, across 
the great ranges twice, now back again. He trusted 
to luck for food. 

"I've had pretty good luck," said he. "I'll get 
'em yet." 

But often and often inscrutable visitors will sit 
all evening at your camp-fire, discuss with you the 
country, the trails, politics, mining and the county 
supervisors, only to leave you next day none the 
wiser as to their identity, their business, or even 
their names. 

140 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 



XIII 
OUR NEIGHBOURS 

THE Cabin is not on one of the highways of the 
mountains. Our trail leads nowhere but 
to ourselves. One thoroughly conversant with the 
turnings of the Ridge and its numerous canons will 
here find a short cut to the Shuteye country, but 
these people are few. Nevertheless, down our road 
in the course of the season many and varied visitors 
find their way. 

There are the Rangers, of course. The summer 
headquarters of the Supervisor are at the other end 
of the Ridge. Thence come the men of the Forest 
Service on their varied business. We know them 
all, and like them, and are always glad to see their 
ponies sidling up to our hitch rail. The summer is 
their busy season. All the manifold business of 
the Forest is pacing its swiftest. Fire fighting, 
sometimes sixty hours at a stretch, trail and bridge 
building, the regulation of grazing, the watch for 
trespass, the sale of timber, the constant supervision 
of all the special privileges the National Forests now 

143 



THE CABIN 

offer the public, the compilation of reports, all keep 
them riding and working all day and every day. 
When a few hours' leisure offers, they string barbed 
wire around their pastures and build posts, cabins, 
corrals. Constantly they are meeting new emer- 
gencies, new people, new ideas. They develop 
rapidly. In three years a raw mountain boy, or a 
youth callow from the forest schools, has turned to 
a quiet, steady-eyed, self-reliant, toughened piece 
of steel and whalebone capable of and enthusiastic 
for any duty to forward his beloved Service. 

That is, if he sticks. It is a constant source of 
interest and amusement to contemplate the weeding- 
out process. Each year brings its crop of re- 
cruits. The newcomer generally cherishes a hazy 
idea that a Ranger's chief duty is to ride abroad 
pleasantly on patrols, to count rings in tree-stumps, 
and to see that everybody obeys regulations. Ten 
to one he is set at stretching barbed wire, or splitting 
cedar posts, or digging holes, or handling large 
jagged rocks. When his hands are all cut and 
skinned, his muscles sore, and his back tired, he is 
called to ride a hasty six hours to a large hot fire on 
a side hill. Here he works for two days in a broiling 
sun, over broiling coals, with little water, and per- 
haps no food. He gets faint, finally sick. He tells 
the Head Ranger these painful facts, and is surprised 

144 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 

to discover that he is expected to go ahead anyway. 
Other men are working methodically, as a matter 
of course, when they are so dry that their tongues 
swell, and so tired that they stagger. When that fire 
is corralled, all ride back home again. Our new 
Ranger goes to bed to sleep it off. After a few hours 
he is awakened and told of another fire in another 
direction — a bigger fire than the last. He is filled 
with consternation. 

"We're dead!" he cries. "We can't do anything 
more!" 

"We've got to," is his reply. 

Of course this is the rough end, but the rough end 
of rangering presents itself oftener than the smooth 
middle. At the end of the season our youngster — 
if he sticks — has been literally tried by fire. He 
looks with contempt on what he used to consider 
hard work. And if furthermore he can develop 
intelligence, tact, and resourcefulness in dealing 
with men, and an ability to get on with his fellows, 
he is in a fair way to become a good Ranger. About 
one out of four succeeds. 

And the other three depart, their souls filled with 
a great disgust, their delusions dissolved, their faith 
in humanity shaken. One function only have they 
served — that of supplying those of sterner quality 
with the material for camp-fire jokes. Rangers have 

145 



THE CABIN 

been known wickedly to sympathize night after night 
with the terrible woes of a novice with the sole purpose 
of drawing those woes into speech. And sympathy 
goes far toward loosening the tongue of a youngster 
whose feet are sore, whose back is lame, and whose 
poor hands are full of barbed-wire punctures. 

The men who remain three years in the Service 
are generally there to stay. They are filled with 
an enthusiasm hard to understand until you have 
ridden and worked with them, studied their prob- 
lems, and shared their triumphs. In the old days 
when the Land Office was in charge and appro- 
priations few, it was no unusual thing for a Ranger 
to spend up to half his monthly salary for necessary 
tools he could procure in no other way. Now 
that the Bureau of Forestry has substituted an 
honest and efficient administration for the old 
regime, the same spirit manifests itself. A certain 
Sub-ranger, with wife and children to support, was 
promoted to Ranger with an increase of three hun- 
dred dollars a year. A friend congratulated him on 
his raise in salary. 

"Damn the pay!" rejoined the Ranger; "it's 
getting rid of that 'sub.'" 

Every once in a while these men make up their 
minds to resign. They never do. The reason for 
the resolution is generally this : 

146 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 

When the Land Office was in charge, the income 
from the National Forests was about $60,000 a year- 
Then Congress howled wildly about having to ap- 
propriate for their support some $400,000. Under 
the Bureau of Forestry the income jumped rapidly 
to over a million and a half. Did Congress allow 
this fund to remain long at the disposal of the Ser- 
vice .f* Not noticeably! It promptly passed a bill 
turning all receipts from the National Forests into 
the General Treasury. Then it calmly went on 
appropriating lesser and more inadequate amounts. 
All along the line the Service is crippled for lack of 
funds; and yet it is turning in yearly to the National 
Treasury four or five times what it receives as an 
allowance.* 

So when a Supervisor, by forethought, hard work, 
and crafty planning, makes a good showing with 
twenty-five men, his reward is not opportunity of 
extending his field or carrying out broader ideas. 
He is told that as he can do so much with twenty- 
five men, his force during the coming year will be 
reduced to twenty. Encouraging, isn't it } Then 
he gets blue, and frames his resignation. About 
that time some one rides in to tell him that some- 
body's running a donkey engine without spark 
arresters, or that Cook's cattle are trespassing, or 

* Conditions in this respect have gradually improved since the above was written. 
There is room for plenty now! 



THE CABIN 

that Smith wants a contract for shake timber. In 
the meantime, lightning has started a fire over by 
Chiquito. So he spreads his twenty men thin, and 
tells every one to hustle, and forgets that resignation. 

This particular Forest Supervisor lives three miles 
from us, under big firs and sugar pines, and before 
a wide meadow. His headquarters have grown 
from small beginnings. Here a room has been 
added, there an office. Gradually the proud living- 
room, in which some years ago we used to sit around 
a roaring fire, has been overshadowed until now it is 
used as a store-room. A wide verandah under the 
roof, or a three-sided room — whichever you please 
— is edged by a tiny bubbling stream. From it 
rises a stair to a Juliet balcony. The kitchen is 
entirely detached, and has no roof. Although thus 
the mistress is likely to acquire pollen and fir needles 
in her coffee, she also sweetens labour with a sight 
of green trees, blue sky and yellow sunlight. Be- 
yond, in fragrant azaleas, is a tool-house; across a 
ravine is a barn. This must be reached ; so a substan- 
tial rustic bridge spans the gulf. When a thing has 
been needed, it has been built. The great solemn 
woods are full of surprises, pleasant ones always. 

And as the place has grown, so has the community. 
When you visit the Forest Supervisor, you pitch your 
tent in the cedars, tap the flume of water, and dis- 

148 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 

pose your household gods to suit yourself. One has 
a little growing cedar tree next his bunk. On this 
he hangs things, and thus has a Christmas tree all 
the summer through. As more people come, the 
boundaries are extended. Already outposts have 
pushed down across the creek, over the hill. 

All sorts of people are to be met. Rangers are 
continually riding in and out — mountain men, 
graduates of the universities, all moulding to the 
same type. They have their reports to make, their 
instructions to get. Inspectors visit for weeks at 
a time, men from Washington, widely travelled, 
cultivated, intensely in earnest. Technical men 
pursue their varied and interesting investigations, 
timber, entomology, grasses, roots, sociology — every- 
thing to which a scientific mind gives its attention. 
They come with their assistants and their outfits, 
and stay a week or so at a time. One learns more 
from a college professor here than in college. If 
there are Rangers enough in, there is a big bonfire 
some evening, and the scientist talks. And always 
the men of the mountains are there with suggestion, 
complaint, inquiry, business to proffer. They hitch 
their saddle animals to a tree; the pack horses stand 
patiently with down-drooping heads. Spurs clank- 
ing, they walk gingerly across the verandah and 
into the office. For a time the drawl of their voices 

149 



THE CABIN 

is heard. After a while they come forth, mount 
their animals, and ride away. Cattle trespass, free 
use of timber, timber sales, mining claims, water 
rights, pasturage, roads, trails, cordwood — any- 
thing and everything may have been their business. 
Lastly are the tourists, the campers, on their way 
through to the big country. Most of them are 
worth meeting, as they come from all classes, from 
all corners of the world outside. Sometimes they 
are amusing or even irritating in their ignorance. 
They cannot understand why they should not put 
their animals in the meadow. 

"It's public property," they argue: and then go 
away to spread the gospel of bitterness. This is now 
to be noted in regard to opposition, little or big, to 
the Forest Service as at present conducted; it springs 
invariably from selfish interest, whether a petty 
indignation at refusal of horse-feed absolutely neces- 
sary to the public business, or the concerted efforts 
of men like Fulton, Clark, Heyburn, and their ilk 
in the Senate to serve the land-grabbing interests. 

Over all these varied and sometimes incom- 
patible people our Supervisor rules easily by reason 
of his tact, his knowledge of human nature, the ab- 
solute unselfishness of his purposes, and his deep 
personal humility. He is my friend, and it is un- 
gracious to appraise a friend: but I hope this slight 

150 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 

tribute to a disinterested public official may not be 
amiss. 

Like most strong, efficient, and enthusiastic men, 
our Supervisor retains a great deal of the small boy 
in his composition. Thus in case of a celebration 
his mind naturally reacts in the direction of bon- 
fires. If the forester is due for a visit, or the Tech- 
nical Assistant is presented with a baby, or the land- 
grabbers lose a fight in the Senate, or old Jones 
finally comes to time in regard to the trespass matter, 
or it's Fourth of July, or one of the Rangers' kids has 
a birthday, or somebody feels especially happy or 
anything — why, everybody must come to the bon- 
fire! 

They are real bonfires; none of your little hap- 
hazard piles of brush and sticks! First a tall post 
is planted. Around it, wigwam fashion, are stacked 
split poles of pitch pine. Outside them, ends up, 
are other poles, logs, and miscellaneous fuel as much 
as can be placed. When the affair is fired, the 
flames leap straight up fifty feet. At a distance, a 
most respectful distance, we sit, some on benches, 
most on logs or on the ground. For a time the 
fascination of that roaring, waving pillar of flame 
is sufficient. The sparks flying upward in the good 
old scriptural way, the leaping heat waves, the 
tongues of flame reaching like licking tongues 



THE CABIN 

through the hot gases of the fire, the shadows danc- 
ing in and out of the circle of illumination like mis- 
chievous boys, the half-revealments of the gigantic 
trees out in the darkness, all hold the gathering con- 
templative and silent. But after a time conversation 
begins. Simple refreshments pass, pipes and cigar- 
ettes glow. Then the Supervisor likes to read aloud. 
He holds the real attention of every member of the 
miscellaneous crowd. After every sentence or so, 
he interpolates comment of his own. Whatever is 
foreign to the Sierras, he interprets in terms of these 
mountains. It is a treat to hear him read "The 
Ballad of East and West" to the Rangers. Each 
phrase has its running comment. 

"' — and a raw red roan was he' — that's like 
that old horse of yours, Jim; he wasn't much for 
looks, but that colour is tough. Kipling knew what 
he was about when he selected that type." 

Or a little later = 

"* — the snick of the breech blocky' more like our 
army rifles, you see. Bolt action. I don't think 
much of that for ambush work. Winchesters 
wouldn't make such a racket." 

So it went. The trail, the weapons, the animals, 
the men — all were plucked from the half-mythical, 
wholly unreal East and translated into things these 
men handled every da/ of their lives. The drama 

152 



OUR NEIGHBOURS 

of the poem was no longer merely academic; it 
became alive. He snapped shut the book. 

"How about it, John ?" he demanded. "Do you 
believe it ? Would you have done it that way, or 
would you have fetched him a clip side o' the ear 
for being foolish ? '* 

Dazzled by the light of the now sullen coals we 
stumbled through the velvet dark to our waiting 
horses. The animals snorted softly. We rode 
home through the dim forest, unfamiliar with the 
night. The horses knew the way. Only overhead 
were the glorious heavens, crackling with the bril- 
liant stars of the high altitudes. 



IS3 



THE GUEST CAMP 



XIV 
THE GUEST CAMP 

IT IS a very simple matter to have guests at the 
Cabin. We all sleep out under the trees; 
and there are plenty of trees. Up to the number 
of two or three we feed our visitors — and make 
them help wash the dishes. If more come, we 
pass them our camp cook outfit; show them the 
lower spring; and leave them to their own devices. 
Of regular, invited guests, asked from home and 
met at the stage terminal, we have had very few. 
It is a little difficult to guess how people will take 
doing their own laundry and going without sheets. 
A few choice spirits have made the four-day struggle 
to get here, and have professed themselves pleased. 
One was an artist. He constructed a terrace, three 
turnstiles, a section of rail fence, helped build the 
barn and put together a fine wash-bench. The 
nearest approach to his profession was the accom- 
plishment of four stained-glass panes for one of our 
windows. He pasted heavy bond paper over the 
glass, and then with watercolours evolved the most 

157 



THE CABIN 

fantastic and ridiculous heraldic devices for each of 
the four of us. The effect was quite perfect, for he 
even imitated the uneven tinting caused in the 
genuine article by the varying thickness of the glass. 
Beyond that he did not lay brush to canvas. This 
artist, a girl friend of Billy's, my father and brother 
are so far the only "brought-in" guests. 

But of others there have been many. Every once 
in a v^hile we run across people prowling about the 
Sierras, out for a summer vacation, because they 
like it. That very fact goes far toward making 
them eligible for the Guest Camp. If we like them, 
we ask them up for a week or two. Thus we have 
gained new and valuable friends without the usual, 
sometimes fruitless labour of searching through 
multitudes of acquaintances for them. The love 
of the mountains does the sifting for us. From all 
parts of the country they come, east and west — 
young girls and their brothers, college professors 
and their wives, boys just out of school, travellers, 
just plain people. They are varied enough in occu- 
pation, in training, in age, in social condition, but 
they all pass fearlessly by Theophilus's challenging 
sign. Did I tell you of that ? It faces the Trail, 
so that all who run thereon must read. It says: 
"Do you speak the Language of our Tribe f"' 
And sometimes our friends among the mountain 

IS8 



THE GUEST CAMP 

people come for a few days, bringing their beds, 
their grub, their horse-feed with them. Aunt Belle, 
the sawyer's wife, is with us two or three times a 
season. The boys accompany her, and two or three 
others whom her kind heart has Hfted from the heat 
of the midsummer for a breath of mountain air. 
They have camp-fires, and explorations, and great 
times. Occasionally funny things happen. One 
party of them went for a ride, got lost, hunted for 
a way out, fell into the dusk of evening, finally de- 
cided they must stay out over night. They tied 
their horses to trees, scraped together beds of yellow 
pine needles. Finally one of them descended to 
a creek to get a drink. Somehow a log seemed 
familiar, though he could not tell why. After a 
moment his eye caught sight of something white. 
It was a towel. The party were within fifty feet 
of our swimming-pool! 

Again, it began to rain just as a party of nine hove 
in sight. We took them in. For three days the 
storm raged. We all lived in that little two-roomed 
cabin, sleeping at night on the floor, roosting any 
old way in the daytime, rustling firewood, cooking 
in the fireplace while the gray rent veils of mist 
swept through the trees and across the meadow. 
We had the best kind of a time. 

At first visitors suited themselves as to location 

159 



THE CABIN 

Now a fairly definite Guest Camp has been estab- 
lished by a sort of evolutionary process. It is near 
the lower end of the meadow, quite hidden from the 
Cabin, on a dry slope among smaller trees. A con- 
siderable space has been fenced in with fir poles. 
Places for balsam beds are levelled. A framework 
needs only a saddle-blanket or so tacked up to make 
a private dressing-room. It has shelves and a 
bench, and a place for a tiny fire directly in front. 
The lower spring is near by. Altogether it is very 
attractive and convenient. The Artist fitted it with 
swinging gates and dressing-tables and the like. 
If we could persuade the Artist to come back one of 
these times, we should soon possess all the comforts 
of home. And this thought occurs: if thus an artist 
conducts himself under influence of the great forest, 
what should we expect from, say, a plumber .? Would 
his surplus energy manifest itself in improving our 
water supply ? More likely he would write verse. 

I have spoken of the sifting effect of the mountains. 
This is strikingly corroborated by the fact that in 
our five years we have had but two really unwelcome 
visitors. The first was a woman, harmless, well- 
meaning, angular, vain, elderly, and most abomin- 
ably talkative. She came from the Valley and 
spent the summer within striking distance. Like a 
rattlesnake^ she struck suddenly, but, unlike a rattle- 

i6o 



WW'L 




Near tlu' lower imkI (if the meadow- 



THE GUEST CAMP 

snake, without warning. We found her one after- 
noon comfortably seated on the verandah. When 
we came in sight, she began to talk. Her conversa- 
tion assayed one low-grade idea to the thousand 
words, and she had five or six hundred ideas which 
she wished to elucidate before sundown. She was 
near fifty, but was still kittenishly in the running. 
One o'clock was the hour of her arrival, and near 
sundown the time of her reluctant departure. Next 
time she hove in sight Billy saw her first and dropped 
behind the brush like a quail. I managed to sneak 
out of the bedroom window and up the hill to the 
fir thicket where hangs the hammock. Only the 
Artist was left, working innocently away at his ter- 
race. From time to time I heard his plaintive calls, 
and his loudly spoken wonder as to where we could 
have gone, and his confident assurances that we 
would soon be back. In four hours he did this three 
times; which, after all, was meagre punctuation to 
the high-pitched, nasal voice. Finally she left. 
It still lacked an hour to sundown. I do not know 
what the Artist did or said to her, but she never 
called on us again. He was very dignified, and 
received our hypocrisy with scorn. When we had 
quite finished, he told Billy he did not consider it 
dignified for her to crawl on her hands and knees 
behind bushes. 

i6i 



THE CABIN 

The other unwelcome visitor was a sheepman. 
The grazing through the forest roundabout is leased 
to a limited number of sheep. Ordinarily we do not 
know of their existence, for they feed in two small 
bands which are lost among the numberless ravines 
and defiles of the mountains. 

But one day or another we catch sight of a vulture 
sailing high up in the blue. By that we know the 
flocks are approaching, for only with the bleating 
multitudes are these cynical keen-eyed scavengers 
ever to be observed in our clean Sierras. Then 
across the undercurrents of sound, far away, we 
catch a faint mellow murmuring. Hardly can it 
be identified as having a definite objective existence. 
Rather is it like those undervoices one hears amid 
the roar and dashing of a rapid. Then a faint dust 
is discernible as a shade of gray against the atmos- 
pheric blue of distance. A single hlat is carried down 
wind: a single deep clang from one of the huge musi- 
cal bells affected by the mountain sheepmen. We 
hear an elfin barking, then a nearer single crash. 
Finally the murmurous many-voiced multitude is 
opposite us, on the other hill. We can distinguish, 
above the steady monotone of the sheep, various calls, 
the enthusiasm of dogs, an occasional shot. The 
voice of the flock grows to a crescendo, passes, 
dies slowly away. The gray dust-haze settles. 

162 



THE GUEST CAMP 

Again we hear our Hermit Thrushes and our 
streams. 

The owner of the sheep at the time of which I 
speak was an old-timer of the autocratic and patri- 
archal type. Generous, good-natured, big of frame 
and jolly of demeanour, he was the soul of good- 
fellowship — as long as his will was not crossed nor 
his purpose opposed. But through all his life he 
had absolutely ruled his little community. His 
women obeyed him; his sons he ruled even into 
middle age; and his neighbours he succeeded 
in overawing by a certain abundant vitality and 
fierceness of rage. Add to this the fact that he had 
come early to the mountains before rules and regu- 
lations were dreamed of and that he had fought, and 
fought successfully, through a great many cattle 
wars and over a great many trespasses. 

He had sent up a relative of his, also an old-timer, 
to oversee his sheep herders. By the way, there 
are no shepherds in the West — the term is too scrip- 
tural and dignified in its connotations to apply to 
these men. They are always sheep herders. This 
second old-timer was a fat man, brimful of steaming 
energy. He would waddle and puff and stew 
breathlessly up the steepest slopes — but he arrived. 
He had a choleric blue eye and a hearty disposition. 
Common report said he had been considered an 

163 



THE CABIN 

undesirable by the Canadian Mounted Police. 
Certainly the directest way to an explosion was by 
mention of that body. His ideas were those of the 
old-fashioned sheepman: get feed; it doesn't matter 
how or where, but get it. This class has made plenty 
of trouble, both for itself and for the government 
officials. 

Naturally our little hundred acres were excluded 
from grazing. Nevertheless, it proved to be a 
constant struggle to keep the sheep off. The herders 
were Basques and possessed of a conveniently erratic 
knowledge of Enghsh. I showed the old-timer the 
blazed lines. When the sheep grazed over the 
boundaries, however, he was conveniently absent. 
On his return he was volubly sorry: it was a mistake 
by those stupid Basques — but the sheep had the 
feed. We went away for two weeks, but returned 
at the end of ten days. The sheep were feeding in 
our front dooryard, and the herders were lying 
stretched out by our cabin gate. I rode up and 
ordered them off. Two of the Basques failed to 
understand even vigorous sign language. The third 
looked me up and down. 

" I t'ink they more of us as you," said he. " We 
go bimeby." 

He had failed to take in all my equipment. I 
thrust the holster of my Colt's to the front. 

164 



THE GUEST CAMP 

"All right! I go! I go! I go!" he cried hastily. 

They went. After an interval of some weeks I 
spread the news that I was going away again. I 
did not. Two days later, just after daylight, the 
flocks poured over our ridge. That time I " threw 
a scare" into the Basques that lasted out the 
season. Also I wrote to the sheep-owner informing 
him of the facts, and requesting him to issue definite 
instructions to his, men. 

Then came the delicious part of the whole episode. 
This sheep-owner, unsuspected, must have con- 
sumed vast quantities of Deadwood Dick, the 
Duchess, Ouida, and Fourth-of-July orations. I 
received eventually an epistle from him which was 
worth all the bother. The man is probably 
fifty-five years old, well off, of a good education, 
and with wide experience. Yet his letter was that 
of a boy of twelve. Oh, it was well enough spelled 
and written! But the sentiment. He spoke of 
"rich men's playgrounds" — Billy and I chortled 
with delight over that — and "never will I bend 
the knee to arrogant wealth"; and "no minion of 
plutocrats" and the like, until Billy and I had to 
look again at our bank-book to see if the iridescent 
dream might not be true. He ended with a patriotic 
burst about American citizenship. If his sense of 
satisfaction over this effort half equalled our joy 

i6.«; 



THE CABIN 

over its grandiloquence, his ruffled spirit must have 
been soothed. 

All this looked mildly like war. But some of his 
men managed to set fire to the woods near one of 
their camps. Fortunately, Billy and I happened 
to pass that way. We corralled the fire while it 
was yet small. The whole affair did not impress 
the Company favourably. The sheep-owner's lease 
was not renewed. A Frenchman took his place; 
and all has since gone well. 



i66 



THE RIDGE 



XV 
THE RIDGE 

OPPOSING desires tug gently at us all the 
time. The fascination of the Cabin, the 
delight in labour, the wish to get things accom- 
plished tend to keep us at home: the delights of 
exploration call us abroad. We cannot well do both. 
It is remarkable how quickly human nature 
makes for itself an environment in which to try its 
powers and spin out its petty destinies. There is 
no real reason why we should finish our meadow 
ditches, our rail fences, our trails, our graded road 
now — or ever, for that matter. We are very com- 
fortable here; we lack nothing essential. Yet each 
day we rise to a joyous anticipation of new accom- 
plishment. Wlien it is suggested that we go fishing, 
or explore the mountain toward the old Sage Mill, 
or take ten days for an excursion into the big country 
— we "haven't time!" I wonder if that excuse 
seems as real, and is as foolish, to the thousands of 
others all over the world who are making it believ- 
ingly and perhaps a little wistfully. 

169 



THE CABIN 

Now we are possessed of two good legs apiece; 
a saddle horse each; and a pack mule between us. 
With these advantages over our friends the sugar- 
pines we can accomplish much. We can ramble 
out on tours of discovery. The objects of these 
discoveries may be new pools in the creek, new 
birds* nests under the ferns, new knowledge of the 
intimate twists and turns, the glens and glades and 
hollows, the peaks and vistas of our own pine-clad 
range; — or they may be, as once this summer, the 
finding, away back among the chaos of the snow 
peaks, in the awful gorge of a box canon thousands 
of feet deep, some wide pine flat with a brook bub- 
bUng through, and a natural pasture in a pocket of 
the ledges, and pools across which no angler's fly 
had ever fallen, and from which the big trout leaped 
in countless numbers. From here to the top of our 
knoll is a half-mile swarming with interesting doodle- 
bugs, birds, and plants: the Sierras are eighty miles 
or so wide, five hundred long, and, except on the 
edges, uninhabited, wild, tremendous. In these two 
facts rest all the possibilities. 

Of course we know our own range intimately — 
all its water-courses, plateaus, ravines, carions, 
peaks, and hidden meadows. It is about seven or 
eight miles long — before it merges into Shuteye — 
and probably two broad. The forest is magnificent 

170 



^1 



^5°S°^ 




v 



fc>C» 






AuMV tiiick iimoiii; the ciuios uf tliu snow [Kaks 



THE RIDGE 

and almost unbroken. Whiskey Creek runs nearly 
its length, on a wide sloping shelf below the highest 
ridge. From it are tributaries, short, tortuous, 
rapid. From this fact, and the impossibility of 
gaining a bird's-eye view over the forest growth, 
it is exceedingly difficult at first to get the lay of the 
country. Under the trees a ridge-top will coax 
you insensibly farther and farther around to the 
south or west until at last you emerge at a most 
unexpected point. A man considerably practised 
in mental visualization of topographical features 
wil soon get the logic of it all. One not so accus- 
tomed, however, would wander far out of his way. 
He would never get lost, in the sense that somebody 
would have to undertake his recovery; but he would 
be considerably — well, delayed. 

There are about a dozen major meadows on the 
Ridge, all exceedingly beautiful save the one where 
the little mill stands. Besides these, are innumer- 
able "stringers" and tiny pockets of rich feed where 
the range cattle and the deer can stand knee-deep 
in bliss. There are bold granite ridges, and un- 
broken rock sheets covering many acres, and little 
stunted trees growing low and twisted. There are 
wide hillsides warm in the sun, covered with snow 
brush and manzafiita and chinquapin. There are 
thickets of young pines and the depths of willows. 

171 



THE CABIN 

There are broad forests and shady dells; waterfalls, 
rapids, deep still pools, glades where the fairies 
must dance every moonlight night. All the wonder 
and variety of the woodland and the peaks are here. 
And every once in a while you come upon a sheltered, 
shaded, intimate nook, screened with dogwood, 
carpeted with moss, flecked with sunlight, musical with 
birds, watered by a tiny thread of a streamlet, mur- 
murous with buzzing insects, where you can forget, if 
that pleases you, all the grandeurs and the solitudes. 
Of course we learned all these things gradually. 
No single and determined exploration could do 
more than establish the shortest routes between 
various points. That is something. When we 
first came to the Ridge, and before we had any notion 
of settling down here, we rode idly, for the moment's 
pleasure, without much attention at direction, until 
it was time to return to camp. On one such excur- 
sion we emerged from the woods into a gem of a 
round meadow encompassed by a rim fifty feet or 
so high. We rode up over the rim and home again. 
That meadow was then only one of the hundreds 
we had seen in these mountains, and speedily it 
blurred to a memory of a beautiful thing detached 
from all practical details of location. Later, after 
we had built the Cabin and settled down, the picture 
of that green cup returned to us. In our rides and 

172 



w 



y 







s 



oorafc 



III thf lit-arl ol' llu- loro-t 



THE RIDGE 

walks we constantly expected once more to emerge 
on the steep perfect semicircle of the rim, to look 
down again on the peaceful, still emerald sward. 
^ -^^ ations were vain. One after the other 
vssed the meadow possibilities, so to speak. 
roi .^ formation of these mountain meadows de- 
pends on certain well-defined conditions. Knowing 
those conditions you know where to look for a 
meadow. We found many, but never the one. 
Gradually the idea of it fell into the background. 
We remembered it as one remembers the features 
of a dream, or of some natural object seen in 
earliest childhood, when such matters are isolated, 
before they have fallen into an orderly sequence 
of memory. The picture was distinct but utterly 
detached. And so after a time it lost its physical 
reality. The Lost Meadow was something to be 
dreamed about — and doubted. 

Then one day when I was thinking about some- 
thing else — in fact I was most busily searching for 
a section corner placed nearly thirty-five years ago — 
I rounded a corner of a knoll — and there lay Lost 
Meadow, peaceful in the sunshine. One could have 
ridden within a hundred feet of it without seeing it. 
Perhaps we had done so. It was as beautiful as I 
remembered it; and yet I confess to being deeply 
chagrined. What is a real meadow compared to 

173 



THE CABIN 

the dream of one inaccessible ? Who would barter 
the last touch of mystery for a lost reality ? What 
do you suppose the Round Table would have done 
with the Grail if it had gained it ? 

On that point Billy and I once had something 
of an argument. I always maintain that in a 
landscape there should be left one unexplored 
vista, preferably over a hill. I want one direc- 
tion preserved for imagination. If you know 
what is over all the hills, then where are you 
going to pasture the flocks of your fancy ? In 
any well-ordered imagination are glades, forests, 
meadows, and flowers, birds and solemn trees, which 
are the enchanted land. Some people build castles 
there. Personally I do not care for castles. They 
are more fitted to Spanish landscapes; and then, too, 
they generally hurt like the mischief when they 
come tumbling about your ears. The enchanted 
land may be located almost anywhere — tobacco 
smoke, wood coals, white clouds will do — but there 
is a substantial advantage in locating it somewhere 
handy, like over a hill. Even the best imagination 
finds difficulty in transporting its owner vividly 
enough to a cloud or into a wood fire. But any of 
us can wander in fancy up through the trees, over 
the always fascinating skyline, and plump into the 
enchanted land. 

174 



THE RIDGE 

If, however, you happen to have been in propria 
persona over that hill you know the country is al- 
ready occupied by various more or less interesting 
things. Two bodies cannot occupy the same space 
at the same time. Your enchanted land is crowded 
out. Therefore I repeat, firmly, in every landscape 
should be preserved one vista which you do not 
explore. 

At the Cabin I picked out such a vista. There 
are two admirably adapted to the purpose, and I 
hesitated for some time. 

Directly down in front of the Cabin stretches the 
meadow terminated by aspens and by the green pine 
forest. During the daytime that forest looks un- 
broken; but when twilight falls, the planes differen- 
tiate themselves. Greens near at hand are dark, 
those farther away retain still a faint illumination. 
Thus we can see down through an unsuspected forest 
aisle to a distant and fairy hillside. When the sun 
has set, this becomes a light olive-gray in delicate 
contrast to the dark olive-greens nearer at hand. 
The effect is quite magical and charming — a whole 
mountain-side evoked by the evening. 

And, again in view from the front verandah of 
the Cabin, but to the left, rises a long gentle slope 
set with the wonderful straight columns of sugar- 
pines. By chance they grow here in such a manner 

175 



THE CABIN 

as to leave an unobstructed aisle leading straight 
up the hill. The effect of dwindling distance is 
helped by the accident of a false perspective — the 
rows of trees grow into a slight convergence. At 
the very top of the hill a low and delicate screen of 
brush has been thrown across to close the vista, 
like the screen of a theatre around which dancers 
are to appear. The aisle invited one to the spacious 
strolls of kings. Around the screen of brush lay 
the magic country. 

I decided finally on this latter. The other re- 
quired wings wherewith to fly to the fragile distant- 
hillside. Here I could wander idly, each step ap- 
parent through the smoke of my after-dinner pipe, 
up between the columns of the portico to the green 
screen — and there I was, at home with all the rag- 
tags and bobtails of many desired lands and places! 

This lasted a month. Then the expected hap- 
pened. 

"Let's explore up over the hill to-morrow," Billy 
suggested. 

I explained carefully why not. It was evening, 
and the half-light threw mystery down through the 
long straight aisle. Only, by some freak of open- 
ing, the brush screen at the end caught a last shaft 
of light. It stood out faint green in a species of 
translucence. As though to emphasize my remarks, 

176 



THE RIDGE 

at this moment a deer stepped out from the shadow, 
stood for a moment before the screen as though ap- 
pearing on a stage, and faded away into the shadow 
again. 

"Oh!" cried Billy softly. 

"You see!" said I. 

But Billy could not see that deer at all as a guar- 
dian spirit of the enchanted land. Her argument 
was that not even an enchanted land could be as 
wonderful as the realities of these, our Sierras: that 
enchanted lands could be easily moved to localities 
not otherwise desirable, and that therefore it was a 
ihame to deprive ourselves of any possibilities. It 
ended by our walking up through the aisles of the 
trees. Of course! 

Over the brow of the hill lay a little oval of a 
meadow approached by solemn and austere ranks 
of trees. The sun shone cheerfully on the grass: 
the deep shadows were in the woods. Owing to 
various willows and the like one could not see into 
the meadow until directly opposite. 

"This," said Billy decisively, "is a Glade. I've 
read of them, but I never saw one before." 

We went on. A little farther was a rounded 
amphitheatre of a smooth, unbroken, concave, 
semicircular hill. It would have seated twenty 
thousand people, or the entire population of the 

177 



THE CABIN 

fairies. In the centre of it a dozen big sugar-pines 
were giving a masque. They stopped as we came 
along, and waited aloofly until we had gone by. 
The audience of big trees and little trees also sus- 
pended their attention. We hurried on feeling rather 
guilty at having interrupted. 

Over the rim of the amphitheatre we came on two 
old gentlemen with their heads together. They 
were evidently myrmidons, for only their heads 
were above the soil. The heroes were gigantic 
in the old days: the round helmet tops of the old 
gentlemen were quite ten feet above the ground. 
They held very still as we went by; and when we 
looked back they resembled two huge round boulders, 
close together, all alone in the brown soil of the 
forest. 

A little farther we found a cave in the base of a 
huge sugar-pine. The entrance was low, but once 
inside there was room for us both, and for the dogs. 
Its bed was dry and soft. It ran up into dimness, 
like a chimney. We waited some time for the dryad 
to return; but as she did not, we finally had to leave 
without seeing her. 

In all directions were pogsnoggle holes. What 
are pogsnoggles, and of what appearance are their 
holes ? If ever you find a hole that looks as though 
it had been made by thrusting a round cane straight 

178 



THE RIDGE 

into soft earth; or if ever, under an uprooted tree- 
root you come upon a huge, jagged, crooked open- 
ing: and if, moreover, there are no tracks about these 
holes — then be sure you have come upon the abode 
of the wily pogsnoggle, male and female. For the 
sexes live in different kinds of holes, and make no 
tracks. I have never seen a pogsnoggle, but I 
always look hopefully upon their holes. 

And then, after a time, we came upon a meadow, 
one of the prettiest of all, large, willow-grown, with 
a stream, big trees, hills, with green grass and 
flowers and birds. That is as far as we had time 
for that day. 

"There," said Billy, as we turned homeward, 
"can your enchanted land beat that.?" 

I am not sure. At any rate my last unexplored 
vista is gone. For rent cheap, one unlocated home- 
less and friendless enchanted land. 



179 



THE BIG COUNTRY 



XVI 
THE BIG COUNTRY 

SOONER or later we get restless. Then one 
morning we throw "the diamond" over the 
modest pack that suffices us, and are off for 
the Big Country. Sometimes we carry grub for a 
month, and are back again inside the week: 
again we go for a week and are absent several. 
It all depends. 

The Big Country is very big indeed. Three hours 
from our Cabin we top Shuteye Pass and can look 
abroad over a few hundred square miles of it. From 
Mt. Lyell on the north, down the sweep of the Mina- 
rets, past the Mono Creek divide to Goddard, lying 
dim at the south, the ordered procession of splintered 
granite giants capped with eternal snow files by us 
across the distance. They are blue and airy, and 
between us and them lie deep canons, wide forests, 
lower ranges, domes, buttes and rivers, yet they are 
not the top o' the world, but only the outlying ram- 
part. Beyond them still is the Main Crest. And 
when you fish out your map, you find you are gazing 

183 



THE CABIN 

upon but a portion of one quadrangle, and there are 
many quadrangles. 

Here, from Shuteye, is the one chance to see the 
watershed of the Joaquin in general. Hereafter 
the traveller is involved in smaller problems — the 
mazes and labyrinths of woods and mountains, the 
expedience of trails, the grandeurs of granite and 
snow. Only occasionally will the giants among 
which he moves permit him a wide outlook, and then 
only in certain directions. 

Through the Big Country Billy and I have ridden 
many times in the course of many seasons, yet we are 
far from knowing it well. Each year we find new 
meadows, new camps, new fishing, even new moun- 
tains. And when we pass on over the ranges to the 
Merced and Tuolumne watershed on the north or 
the King's and Kaweah on the south, there opens 
before us an inexhaustible, beautiful wonderland. 
In all sorts of company we have ridden. Last year 
I was out six weeks quite alone, and in that time held 
mainly to the snow altitudes. Again we started 
once in a company of sixteen with twenty-nine 
animals. These people were Rangers and their 
wives: each group of two or three had its own outfit 
and did its own cooking: so we journeyed along as 
independently as though alone, and as merrily as 
a troupe of minstrels. At the end of a day or so 

184 




The }i\ii ("oLintry 



^WO : .) 



. AT 



THE BIG COUNTRY 

'•'egan to reduce our number, until at last 
,.n people alone remained, pushing on to a 
.1^ lake where live big trout. 
J. uroughout each and every trip one has adven- 
es. An adventure in the mountains means 
iiing out of the ordinary — often a discomfort 
turned inside out. Our Supervisor came in one day 
to tell us how^ his horse had fallen in a ford, his sup- 
plies and clothes v^et through; and in addition it came 
dark and he had to curl up under a tree until morning. 
"But that was an adventure, wasn't it ?" he cried 
buoyantly. 

Miss Bailey, too, reported her adventure. Being 
possessed of an ambition for Indian baskets, she 
rode down the mountain to a rancheria, but, return- 
ing, got lost in the brush. 

"I'd always heard," said she, "that if you gave 
your horse his head, he would always take you home. 
I did so. He walked up to a tree, tucked up one 
hind leg, and went to sleep. It took me until dark 
to find the trail, the sun was hot, and I got all 
scratched up. But it was quite an adventure, 
wasn't it?" 

No one can guess what the day may bring forth. 
You have fully made up your mind to go to the 
Devil's Post Pile. But after breakfast, when you go 
out to look for the horses, they have disappeared. 

I8S 



THE CABIN 

The bell is nowhere audible. A wide circle dis- 
covers their tracks. These lead straight up the 
mountain. The stones and dirt are scattered, and 
the position of the hoof-marks indicates that the 
animals were on the keen jump. 

"Stampeded," you remark to yourself, and set 
about looking for the cause. At the spring is the 
footprint of a bear. You gaze at it with disgust. 

"If you were a big one, I shouldn't mind," you 
soliloquize, "but you weren't much bigger than 
Brudder Bones!" 

All that day you track horses. Sometimes the 
trail is as easy to follow as a path. Again you have 
to use all your skill to spy out the marks of iron on 
granite. It becomes a game, and an interesting 
one. When finally you come on the truants stand- 
ing asleep in some little green stringer, you are quite 
pleased with yourself, in a way, although you are 
perfectly well aware that trailing three or four 
horses anywhere is a very mild feat. Still, it is 
an adventure. 

Because of adventures it is exceedingly difficult 
to travel on any sort of schedule. You never can 
tell what is going to happen to modify your well- 
laid plans. An unexpected depth and softness of 
snow or an unexpected volume of water may spell 
long delay. An inch on the map means nothing but 

i86 



THE BIG COUNTRY 

uncertainty — an hour or a week indifferently. It 
took me nine days to go ten miles once. 

But all this is fine camp-fire material. When a 
party of experienced mountain travellers is thus 
collected, some interesting yarns can be gathered. 
Adventures are almost always funny as you look 
back on them, or at least they are strongly leavened 
by the humorous element. We once went camping 
with a mighty jolly college professor and his wife. 
Of course we had our good reliable outfit of animals; 
but, as naturally, they had to pick up what they 
could get. Their pack-horse was named Snowball, 
was white, gaunt, independent, and obstinate. If 
we all went one side around an obstruction, he 
generally showed the freedom of his judgment 
by going the other. He followed all right, but Hked 
to choose his own route. 

That was all very well as long as we were in a 
forest country where the going was good. But when 
we climbed above snowline the case was different. 
In that sort of travel the leader picks the best way — 
sometimes it is the only way — and the others tread 
pretty closely in his footsteps. We told this to 
Snowball, and predicted trouble: but that ancient 
animal, with bucolic obstinacy, knew better. Fi- 
nally the expected happened. We came to a brook 
running under a snow-field. Naturally this formed 

187 



THE CABIN 

snow bridges, more or less strong; and obviously 
the proper way to cross that brook was through an 
opening, and not over a snow bridge. Snowball 
thought otherwise. The rotten snow caved through. 
Snowball plunged, heaved, finally turned upside 
down. We arrived to find his nose and four hoofs 
visible. 

This was bad enough, but all at once it occurred 
to our friends that not only was the pack upside 
down, but in the stream! The girls raced to the 
lower end of that snow tunnel. Just in time! They 
rescued a potato bobbing gaily in the swift current. 

So while the Professor and I dug out that fool 
horse, and got him to his feet and out of that hole, 
the two girls stationed themselves either side the 
stream, like cats watching a mouse-hole, waiting 
for things to come out the orifice of that black tunnel. 
Every moment or so one would scream in triumph 
or dismay. Potatoes, onions, provision bags, 
clothes, even a pot or so — everything but bedding, 
and that could not get away — shot forth, was cap- 
tured, and joined its disconsolate companions on the 
rocks. It did not seem funny at the time. 

One summer, when I was out alone, I made a 
long ride down into the mile-deep cup of Kite's 
Cove, out again over the steep ridge, and so into the 
caiion of the Merced. There, to my consternation, I 

1 88 



THE BIG COUNTRY 

discovered that the new railroad into Yosemite had 
been laid directly over the old trail, and that no new 
one had been constructed. The right of way was 
the only route. To the one side was a drop-off of 
from ten to thirty feet into the torrential river; on 
the other, unscalable cliffs. It was fully three miles 
up the cafion before the trail turned off to climb the 
canon walls. The situation was not appealing, if 
one met a train — or was overtaken by one — for 
the curves were so numerous and so sharp that there 
would be no chance for "down brakes.'* 

I sat down and cogitated for some time. Then 
a bright idea struck me. I waited patiently until 
a train passed going up. Then I followed it as fast 
as I could travel. I argued that in three miles 
that train would not be likely either to turn around 
and come back or to pass another. 

It was a bright idea all right. Only at about the 
mile-and-a-half point I came around the corner on 
a track inspector's car coming my way. It was a 
gasoline car, without a muffler, and sported a bright 
yellow canopy top! 

Everybody's movements were guided by instinc- 
tive reactions, for nobody had time to think. The 
track inspector stopped. I hadn't time to get off, 
so I threw myself strongly toward the cliff. The 
two animals just flew out into space. They were so 

189 



THE CABIN 

terror-stricken that they never even turned around, 
but jumped plump off the right of way and into the 
Merced. 

I fell on a pile of stones and skinned myself up 
somewhat. After I had found I could still walk, I 
looked over the edge. The animals had lit on a 
shallow bar. I clambered down, and after con- 
siderable manoeuvring got them back to the tracks 
— the gasoline car, at my earnest request had 
gone on. In ten minutes more we turned off to the 
ascending trail. A slight twist of Flapjack's fore- 
foot — from which he soon recovered — and a 
"busted-up" right hand for myself comprised the Hst 
of casualties. For five weeks the latter bothered me 
enough to call out some ingenuity in camp work 
and packing. This was not especially funny at 
the time. Yet can you imagine a situation more 
inherently comic .? In the depths of the wildest 
country in California, two mountain-bred animals 
confronted without warning by a gasoline car with 
a yellow top! 

Another time I was working my way up through 
a pass filled with snow. The month was August, 
but the precipitation had been unusual the winter 
before, and the zigzag trail was quite buried. Only 
occasionally did eight or ten feet of it show where a 
bare patch had melted. As the slope was very steep, 

190 



THE BIG COUNTRY 

it was impossible to walk the animals out over the 
snow. Therefore I was engaged busily in chopping 
footholds, in kicking shale into a species of solidity, 
and generally working like a beaver after the manner 
of one "getting through the country." In this way 
we reached nearly to the saddle of the pass. To go 
through the gap we had to skirt the upper edge of 
a living glacier just over sixteen hundred feet in 
height. I would leave Demi and Flapjack standing 
while I made trail. After I had accomplished forty 
or fifty feet of it, I would lead them along. 

Flapjack is the most sensible mule I have ever 
owned or had anything to do with. He possesses 
many characteristics I should like to point out to the 
instinct-only school of naturalists — such as a genuine 
love of scenery, a dog's faithfulness, and innumerable 
instances where he has worked out original problems 
by means of at least an extraordinary imitation of 
mental processes. But in the present instance he 
made a mistake. Becoming bored with our slow 
progress — Flapjack is easily bored, like most in- 
telligent people — he wandered out on the snow- 
field. Zip! each hoof skated in a different direction! 
Flapjack began to slide on his belly, head on. It 
was exactly like coasting — the same increasing 
descent, the same momently accelerating speed — 
and a slope of sixteen hundred feet on which to gather 

191 



THE CABIN 

momentum! There was nothing to do. I stood 
erect and waved my hat at that rapidly disappear- 
ing black mule. 

** Good-bye, Flap!" I shouted. 

Then I began to adjust my ideas to the thought 
of climbing all that weary way down again. I was 
alone, and days in from civilization. It would be 
necessary to collect from the ruined pack what I 
could carry comfortably on my saddle horse. The 
bulk of the pack, the mule, and his outfit were, of 
course, a total loss. All these considerations came 
into my mind, were appraised and adjusted while 
poor old Flapjack was sliding over the shoulder of 
the glacier before the last steep plunge. Then I 
saw him stop with a jerk that seemed almost to 
snap his head off and hang motionless, a little black 
speck on the whiteness. Snatching my riata from 
the saddle and the little safety hand-axe from the 
saddle-bags, I made my way as quickly as I could 
over the shale and along the edge of the snow-field 
to a point opposite where Flap had brought up. 
Then I cut footholds out; got the rope around Flap's 
neck; returned to the shale; took a turn around a 
projecting and solid boulder, and started up the mule. 
At the end of the rope he partly scrambled, partly slid 
in a semicircle to the comparative safety of the shale. 
Then I took a look to see what had stopped him. 

192 



THE BIG COUNTRY 

It was a small triangular rock projecting above 
the surface of the snow. I looked carefully, but as 
near as I could see it was the only rock on the half- 
mile expanse of the glacier. Furthermore, it would 
have been too small to have stopped the mule if he 
had not hit it accurately. The least preponderance 
of weight either side would have swung him around 
it. After that adventure Flap attended strictly 
to business and did not attempt any more indepen- 
dent excursions unless he knew exactly what he 
was about. 

Sometimes the adventure is of daily occurrence, 
but it does not cease being an adventure for all that. 
Of this class was Old Slippery. 

Old Slippery was an eiderdown quilt belonging to 
a girl. It was light as feathers and silk could be; 
it was very warm; and — the owner assured us — 
unexcelled for making a comfortable bed. But I 
had to pack Old Slippery. That was my little 
daily adventure. 

For not only did Old Slippery earn its name from 
obvious characteristics, but it was as delicate as an 
unboiled Easter-egg. The silk cover was as easily 
punctured as a soap bubble. The least projection 
among the constituents of the pack, the smallest 
twig, the gentlest accidental scrape against a rock, 
was sufficient to gouge a neat triangular hole. 

193 



THE CABIN 

Through that hole floated gently clouds of eider- 
down. In that quilt were magicked some five hun- 
dred cubic yards of down. I know: for we lost out 
at least three hundred, and the comforter was still 
plump and soft. 

Having surrounded Old Slippery with all loving 
care and soft things, it became necessary to tuck 
in the top canvas in such manner as to protect the 
quilt against the accidents and incidents of a day's 
journey. This took time and thought and profanity 
and stuffing in. Finally we would throw the hitch. 
Then a corner of Old Slippery would be discovered 
sticking out just where the first sapling would catch 
it. We stuffed that in. Promptly Old Slippery 
burst forth at another place. After ten minutes of 
this the playful old thing would decide to be good, 
and we would make our start for the day. 

At first one always gets the impression that the 
start for the day is made only after a good hard day's 
work is done. So many things have happened! 
You have arisen and washed and dressed — no light 
feat, with the thermometer well below freezing and 
the meadow white with frost. Then there is break- 
fast to cook and eat, the dishes to wash, the utensils 
and food to stow away, the beds to be folded, all 
the camp to be packed for travel. The horses must 
be caught, unhobbled — frosty buckles and straps — 

194 



THE BIG COUNTRY 

led a greater or lesser distance to camp, saddled, 
finally packed. You put out your campfire at last 
with the feeling that it is lucky you do not belong to 
the union or your time would be nearly up. As a 
matter of fact it is more the multiplicity than the 
duration that has impressed you. By getting up at 
five I can, when alone, be under way by half-past 
six. A larger and more complex party will take 
from two to three hours. 

Then begins the day's journey in the freshness of 
the morning. The air is crisp; the birds are all 
singing; the dash of the stream and the oversong of 
the trees are in your ears, the dazzle of snow and 
granite in your eyes. The world is very good. You 
attack the problems of routes, trails, difficulties of 
the way, with enthusiasm. 

Time slips away on wings for five or six hours. 
Then somehow the animals begin to be irritating. 
A certain pack-horse named Bingo irritates you 
strangely by his habit of walking a few steps from 
the trail to crop greedily until the very latest moment. 
Your saddle is getting hard, and shifting does little 
good. If you are not quite certain of your route, 
you grow impatient over that fact. You are not 
tired, of course, but you are apt to be a little cross 
and brooding. 

Then quite unexpectedly a patch of green shows 

195 



THE CABIN 

to right or left. You ride down pessimistically. 
Yes, there is good water after all. It will do. The 
saddles and packs are thrown off, the horses hobbled 
and turned loose to graze. Everything Is in a most 
discouraging mess. 

Still, you tell yourself, doggedness does it. One at 
a time you overcome such simple tasks as collecting 
firewood, carrying the canvas bucket full of water, 
searching out the grub bags, slicing the meat. The 
crackle of the fire and the bubble of water cheer 
you somewhat. You get up energy enough for a 
wash. 

A half-hour later you are drawing at your pipe 
with a comfortable sense of repletion beneath a 
loosened belt. This is a bully place to camp; 
couldn't be beat. Running water, fine horse-feed, 
heaps of firewood, and level places for beds. And 
just look at the scenery! Where'd you beat that.? 
Guess ril make me a fir bed, and try for trout 
awhile. Horses seem to be enjoying it. That Bingo 
is in good shape: he knows how to take care of him- 
self — gets pretty near a full meal every day along 
the trail! 



196 



TROUT 



XVII 
TROUT 

THE Eastern trout fisherman is likely to receive a 
shock when first he angles in the Big Country. 

He is probably accustomed to streams wherein 
every pool, every riffle, every hole, if not easily ac- 
cessible, is at least possible. Probably he is used 
to wading his brooks. At any rate he would consider 
himself most neglectful and slipshod were he to pass 
over even a single bit of water where a trout might 
lurk. If occasionally the chance of thicket or of 
steep bank secludes a pool from his first attention, 
he is certain eventually, by the exercise of ingenuity, 
to drop a fly in that protected spot. 

Also our Eastern brook-fishing is apt to be a 
leisurely aff'air. We drop gently down the stream, 
flicking our flies to right or left, pausing often to 
whip out thoroughly some especially inviting pool. 
Once in a while we have to break through a little 
thick brush or clamber up a steep bank. Then we 
pant heavily and think it pretty hard going, until we 
get back again to our amphibious environment. 

199 



THE CABIN 

Nor is the case of the hill fishing much different. 
There is more scrambling to do, and perhaps a trifle 
more brush. But the progress is always pleasantly 
and steadily downhill, and never is one separated 
far from the beloved stream. 

When our gentle angler comes West, however, 
the whole logic of the game is changed. Looking 
down from above on one of the swift torrential 
mountain streams, his heart is filled with joy. One 
after another the deep green bubble-shot pools 
receive the cascades and falls of white water; long 
dark cliff-hung stretches hint of the big fellows; 
hundreds of yards of fluted riflSes swirling about 
boulders tell of the smaller fry. He scrambles 
eagerly down to the stream's edge. The casting 
is all that could be desired; he gets a strike almost at 
the first drop of the fly. Three fine fish reward him. 
Full of pleasant anticipations, he prepares then to 
move down to the next pool below. He cannot. 
At this point his troubles begin. 

For, coincidentally, at this point the cliffs rise sheer 
on either side. The next pool is just around the 
corner — but the corner is fifty or sixty feet high. 
Our angler looks up in despair. 

"Have I got to climb over that thing?" he de- 
mands fiercely. 

A universal silence seems to give assent. He 
200 



TROUT 

clambers and clings and slides, over and down — 
the pool lies below him, but quite out of reach ex- 
cept, perhaps, by means of a rope. From above 
he can see the big trout rising and falling slowly as 
is the habit of the mountain fish in the deep clear 
pools. After a dozen futile attempts, he gives it 
up. And in the course of the next mile he gets at 
that fascinating, desirable, irritating stream but 
three or four times. Also he has climbed and 
scrambled and scratched himself to a state of pant- 
ing exhaustion. 

Now everybody knows that the ethics and canons 
of sportsmen are as the laws of the Medes. Nothing 
more ironclad can be imagined. Not only is it un- 
sportsmanlike to do things contrary to the way you 
have been brought up to do them; but it is no fun! 
Similarly, automatics and pump guns and mechani- 
cal fish-hooks and salt logs and jacking and other 
atrocities of the kind would give a true sportsman 
no pleasure at all. These are matters of ethics. 
But then there are also matters of habit. A thing 
may be quite proper and yet be irritating in concep- 
tion and execution because it runs contrary to the 
way we have always done things. It all depends 
on training, of course. Some people quite sincerely 
consider bait for trout unsportsmanlike. If they 
cannot catch with a fly, they will not catch at all. 

201 



THE CABIN 

Personally I prefer fly-fishing above all others, and 
would never use any other method if the fish are 
rising even occasionally: but if it is a case of "wums 
or nothing" with them, I am not the man to deny a 
worthy trout anything in reason. 

This is just the case of. our Eastern angler. It 
irritates him horribly to leave all those excellent pools 
unfished. They haunt him. Regrets fill his heart. 
He is thoroughly unhappy about them, and is op- 
pressed with a genuine feeling of guilt at having done 
the thing incompletely. So much of sport is the 
thoroughness and smartness with which we do 
things! By night all his sacred traditions are 
shattered. He comes to the conclusion that moun- 
tain fishing is rather poor, very hard work, and not 
much fun. 

Of course, after a time he changes his mind. He 
comes to realize the limitations of the human frame 
as opposed to large, abrasive, and immovable moun- 
tains. When this idea has quite penetrated, it forces 
out the other Eastern-bred notion: he comes to see 
that the fishable pools are in the minority. As a 
next step, he learns to ignore the inaccessibles, and 
to look with practised eye for those places vouch- 
safed him by the kindness of the Red Gods. He 
fishes a pool, and walks quite cheerfully by a dozen 
to fish another. 

203 



TROUT 

It is a very simple bit of practical philosophy to 
acquire. Yet you who are anglers will understand. 
All the old traditions soaked in with the splash- 
ing sunlight, the gurgling cold water, the twilight 
shadows of a thousand days of a hundred Eastern 
streams have had to be eradicated. The sacredness 
of What-has-always-been has had to give way. 
Conservatism and radicalism; institutions and new 
ideas; progress and content — why, if the list were 
only continued a little we would find ourselves in 
essence face to face with all the old antagonisms 
of our race! When our Easterner begins to love the 
mountain fishing, he has undergone more than a 
change of ideas in regard to trout pools. It would 
be curious to follow him back to his home, to see 
his old accustomed affairs as he will see them now. 

As he looks back on that first day's sport, he 
laughs at himself. He sees now that, while he did 
not fish half the pools, he caught twice the fish, of 
greater weight, and as high a degree of gameness as 
he was accustomed to in his old haunts. In addi- 
tion he will remember the crisp mountain air, the 
great hillsides, the chaos of granite over which the 
white water boiled, the giants with their snow capes 
about their mighty shoulders calm against the 
heaven — that sky of the unbelievable deep clear 
blue peculiar to the high altitudes, a uniform colour 

203 



THE CABIN 

from zenith to horizon. Then he is in a fair way to 
become an enthusiast. 

For one thing, he learns not to be in so much of 
a hurry to move on after he has struggled to his 
pool. More likely now he will light a pipe and 
straddle a boulder, and cast again and again over 
the creaming or darkling waters. Every once in a 
while one of the inhabitants will rise to his lure. 
He confesses to a growing astonishment at the 
number of these. 

I remember one hole where for two weeks I fished 
every afternoon. A big yellow pine had fallen out 
into the stream, and the eddy had scooped a deep 
hollow in the sands beneath. The swift current 
boiled up from under it. Thirty feet or so down 
stream was a sandbar on which one could stand 
ankle-deep. Beginning at the shoreward end of 
that log, I would cast foot by foot until I touched 
the swirl around its tip. By that time I had caught 
my two dozen. There were three of us in the party, 
and we could eat two dozen a day. Throughout 
the entire period of our stay, except for occasional 
curiosity, I never fished anywhere else. I suppose 
each day new fish took the places of those that had 
been caught. At any rate, the supply seemed in- 
exhaustible: the last two dozen came as rapidly as 
the first. Often I have sat on a boulder, casting 

204 



TROUT 

occasionally to see if they were ready to take hold, 
while more restless companions would search always 
on and on for pools where they were biting. For 
a long time I would catch nothing: then they would 
begin to strike. By dark I would have as many 
as the rest. 

But I must confess that the fascination of wander- 
ing is more often in the ascendant. It is fun to 
scramble over points, to slide down rock shutes, 
to wade gingerly along submerged ledges, to give 
your whole soul to getting from this point to that — 
with always the possibility of the Big One, of course. 
In that manner one is more apt to have adventures 
than if one should sit still. I have encountered 
bears on the same errand as myself. Sometimes by 
the edge of the water one comes upon a red mineral 
stain, and a tiny fountain welling up through a round 
hole in the rock. The rubber cup then dips up a 
drink of the most delicious sparkling soda water. 
The quaint water ouzel flits up and down the stream. 
If you are in great luck, you may see her walk calmly 
down below the surface of the current. How she 
maintains herself against it, I am unable to guess. 
In the mean time the little ouzels squawk and cheep 
like a lot of baby robins in anticipation of a meal. 
Sometimes the hillsides rise through the pines in a 
long even slope. Sometimes they jump in rock 

205 



THE CABIN 

ledges. Again you feel yourself an atom in the 
twilight inferno of a deep gorge through which the 
river runs hollowly. You slip and stumble over 
boulders: you manoeuvre your rod through thickets: 
you walk gingerly over long smooth fields of un- 
broken rock: you wander at ease over tiny meadows, 
broad bars, where the footing is solid and the casting 
easy. 

But the casting is always that, once you have 
gained a casting position. The spring freshets see 
to it that your back cast has room. 

And always, at any moment, you may look up to 
the serenity of great mountains and flawless skies. 
They, and the joys of exploration, would be enough 
even without the trout. 

But the trout are good, exceedingly so. As in 
most streams, they run big and little. The average 
mountain rainbow, the fellow you expect generally 
when you cast into a likely-looking pool, runs from 
eight to fifteen inches, and is game for his weight. 
The fingerlings do not bother one much, for some 
reason. Big trout frequent certain localities. 

I shall never forget one place. It was about nine 
thousand feet up, in a cup of granite perhaps three 
or four miles across, and circled on three sides by 
very tall mountains. In the cup was a lake fringed 
by a narrow band of lodgepole pine and willow. A 

206 



TROUT 

tumbling, brawling stream fell from the snows into 
the upper end of the lake. At the lower end it stole 
quietly out through a beautiful open poplar woods 
for a quarter-mile. Then it fell and leaped and 
tumbled away down the mountain. 

The poplar woods were open, as I have said, and 
flecked with warm sunlight, and full of birds. The 
river flowed quietly, its surface almost glassy in its 
reflections of the checker of very blue sky and of 
translucent green leaves. Yet when I looked closely 
I could see the waving marks of a strong current 
and eddy sweeping on, like the almost invisible swirls 
in a thick green glass. Through them the bottom 
wavered and trembled slightly, and so I appreciated 
the volume of water flowing through this quiet glade. 

The light undergrowth grew to the edge of the 
bank, and the bank itself was chopped ofi^ square 
and steep only a foot or so above the water. In 
some places it was deeply undermined, the top held 
together by interlaced roots. Trees leaned peril- 
ously. Some had even yielded, and, falling into 
the current, had been swept at a long angle with 
the stream's bed, there to form mysterious holes 
and shadows. 

I crept to the edge and looked in. Through the 
green water the bottom was plainly to be seen, with 
all its hills and vales, its old snags, its rocks, and the 

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THE CABIN 

clean white sand. In some places it was at least 
twelve feet deep, and nowhere less than four or 
five. Yet every inch of it was visible, as plainly 
as though in the air, save for that translucent green 
and the delicate waving swirls like the shadows in 
thick green glass. 

Trout lay singly, in twos and threes. Some were 
close to the bottom in plain sight, their gill-covers 
moving slowing. Others could be made out dimly 
as shadows in the shadows. All were big. There 
were no little ones at all. From where I stood — 
and I could see only a hundred feet or so of the stream 
— I counted twenty-odd. Judging by the samples 
I caught later, not one weighed less than three 
pounds. As for the largest, I'm not foolish enough 
even to guess at him. 

I was not out to fish that afternoon, but I made a 
hurried round trip to camp and back to that aqua- 
rium. Then, concealed in the brush, I began to 
manipulate my flies. You fishermen all know how 
hopeless it seems when you can actually disapprove 
of your fish in plain view. You cast seductively 
in front of the biggest in sight. He pays absolutely 
no attention whatever to your eflPorts. Finally when 
you annoy him enough, he fades away. Or else 
he merely opens and shuts his gills three or four 
times. After you have cast your arm lame some 

208 



TROUT 

little fellow rushes madly out from somewhere and 
seizes your fly. He turns that pool upside down 
before you succeed in landing him. When the 
bubbles cease, there is the big one communing wisely 
with himself on the vanity of human endeavour. 

There is one way, however, and that lies through 
the gates of patience. Of course, if your fish has 
seen you, then you might as well pack up and move 
on. But if he is unaware of your existence, and 
you will cast and cast and cast, and rest, and then 
cast some more, perseveringly and accurately and 
skilfully, why, sooner or later that big fish is going 
to become annoyed. 

"Great guns!" he will remark to himself; "that 
red and white thing's a nuisance! It disturbs my 
meditations." 

Mightily, almost lazily he will rise; turn slightly; 
take your fly gently in his mouth; and, still with 
dignified deliberation, turn to depart with it. Then 
is your cue to strike — if you can swallow your heart 
in time. 

I fished cautiously all the afternoon. It would be 
rash even to guess at the number of enormous trout 
inhabiting that quarter-mile of stream. They were 
not rising. Not one in a hundred even knew my 
fly was skittering across the water; or, if he did 
know, he did not care. But then, big fish are never 

209 



THE CABIN 

" rising'* in the sense that smaller fish rise — hungrily, 
eagerly, in a rush. Otherwise there would be no 
more big fish, for they would all be caught out. Yet, 
by keeping at it, I landed fi^ur. They were about of 
a size. I had no scales, but they were from a half- 
inch to three inches longer than the first joint of my 
saddle rod; and that is just twenty-three inches. 
In the stream were several fish bigger than those I 
caught. 

I measured them, and returned them carefully 
to the water, for I was travelling alone, and had no 
use for so much fish. Then in the half-hour of good 
light remaining, I dropped to where the water leaped 
down the granite, and caught four ordinary trout 
for supper. 

The trout hog is always a great puzzle to me. 
There are plenty of the species roaming around — 
men who catch a hundred or so fish and leave them 
piled in a rotting heap. If a man were confined in 
his fishing to just what he can eat, I could see some 
colour of reason — though not the slightest excuse — 
for such a performance. When I travel alone, two 
or three ordinary trout are all I can possibly get away 
with at a meal; and a single big one would stump me 
completely. That would not be much fishing for 
an enthusiastic angler. I could imagine a strong 
temptation to catch "just one more," even if the 

2IO 



TROUT 

probabilities were strong that the one more would be 
wasted. As a matter of fact I catch just as many 
as I have time for — and put them back. This 
should be done gently, with wetted hand. Then it 
does not injure the fish in the least: on the contrary 
it furnishes him with healthful and much needed 
exercise. Only if he bleeds at the gills is he in 
distress. Then I slip him in the creel — or old 
flour sack, rather, in the wilderness — and add him 
to the larder. In this manner it is possible to enjoy 
a full day's sport, and to leave the stream almost as 
populous as when you cast your first fly over it. 

By hooking your scales through the loop of your 
leader, you can weigh your catch. By measuring 
off inches on the butt of your rod, you can measure 
him. Then disengage him gently from the hook, 
slide him in the water, and wish him God-speed. 
He will lie quite still for a moment or so "getting his 
breath," as you might say. Then he will drop 
slowly out of sight. 

I once fished for some weeks where I had an op- 
portunity of making some interesting experiments. 
Two very large pools lay one above the other. I 
built between them a loose barrier, but sufficiently 
close to prevent the trout passing from one pool to 
the other. Whenever I caught a trout, I first nicked 
his hard gill cover with a knife, then transferred 

211 



THE CABIN 

him to the other pool. At last I had nearly the 
whole population concentrated in the upper basin. 
Then I began to transfer them back again, watching 
carefully for signs of injury. Whenever they had 
been handled with a damp hand, they seemed as 
healthy as ever. A very dry hand did no injury as 
long as the grasp was not too firm. But if the fine 
slime became rubbed from the fish's sides, it seemed 
to afford opportunity for parasitic or diseased 
growths. Some of the fish I caught as many as 
eight times apiece. Generally they would rise 
as eagerly as ever the day after being played to a 
finish. About fifteen or sixteen hours was the 
shortest interval. 

My own practice in fishing alone is exactly the 
reverse of accepted fishermen's doctrine: I put 
back all the big ones, and keep the little six or seven 
inch fellows. The latter are better eating, and the 
lone fisherman can do more in the way of numbers. 
Of course, if one is out with a party of friends, he 
likes to lug in Leviathan and brag thereon, and do 
a little exhibiting with pride. That is half the fun. 
But then. Leviathan goes pretty well fried in sections, 
or broiled, or as basis for a fine old-fashioned 
"mulligan." 

Trout-fishing here varies as the mountains vary. 
I would not have you understand that the foregoing 

212 



TROUT 

descriptions tell it all; only the typical, what you are 
most likely to find. 

There are streams that flow for miles through wide 
alpine meadows, where you can walk along the sod 
and cast off the bank. There are other streams deep 
and wide, that resemble our Eastern rivers. There 
are astonishing little trickles you can straddle, and 
from which you must fill your water bucket with a 
cup; and in their pools are twelve or fifteen-inch 
fish. I do not yet quite understand how they turn 
around. 

Californians are sometimes very fond of the lake 
fishing. Certainly the mountain lakes are full of 
trout, when they contain any at all. Toward even- 
ing the entire surface of the water, in all directions, 
near and far, is ringed by the slowly widening circles 
of fish rising. One can cast from the bank into 
almost any depth of water and get from one to three 
strikes at almost every cast. Three of us caught — 
and put back — one hundred and sixty-eight trout 
from eight to fifteen inches in about an hour and a 
half. Nearly two a minute! 

And the supply seems inexhaustible. Certain 
lakes, like those at Mammoth Pass, happen to be on 
wagon roads. When the hot weather strikes home, 
the plains people come up into the hills. They 
rumble along in all sorts of vehicles — butcher carts, 

213 



THE CABIN 

farm wagons, surreys, buggies, two-wheel carts, 
grocers' delivery wagons — anything that may be 
handy. They do not get very far, of course, but 
they climb up to the pines and the cooler air. They 
are an engaging lot, replete with babies, phono- 
graphs, farm horses, fire-arms, banjos, accordions, 
and Japanese lanterns. When they settle down, 
they are planted for the summer. Their chief de- 
light is to go fishing. 

As I said. Mammoth is accessible. Its half- 
dozen lakes are fished vigorously every afternoon of 
the season by a miscellaneous and bloodthirsty 
horde in waders, bare legs, canvas boats, dugouts, 
and impromptu rafts. Yet the fishing is notable. 
They bite like bulldogs, and are carried to camp by the 
hundreds. Possibly they naturallyincrease too rapidly 
for their own good, and this thinning out is salutary. 

Sad to say, as a general rule, the trout to be caught 
in the lakes are not particularly attractive to the 
experienced angler. They sometimes run very big 
— as high as seven or eight pounds. But they are 
born tired. Two or three flops fulfil all fish con- 
ventions as to objecting. Then in they come like 
so many suckers. Also, their flesh is not so hard 
and sweet as that of their hard-fighting brethren of 
the streams. They make a very good amusement 
for the plains campers who want fish, and lots of 

214 



TROUT 

'em. Providence must have invented them for that 
express purpose. 

Of course this rule has exceptions — everything has 
exceptions when it is a question of fish and fishing. 
There are cold-water lakes with big outlets where the 
fish are game and hard. The lake trout caught 
in such places as Convict Lake, Tahoe, and Klamath 
are said to be a fine fish. You catch them with a 
heavily weighted trolling line, and I never did like 
dredging. As a general rule the real angler will 
find better sport in the streams. Given a boiling 
torrent going down a twenty-per-cent. grade, a four- 
pound trout, a six-ounce rod, and a thousand tons 
or so of rounded slippery boulders, and the most 
exacting sportsman should be satisfied. It is no 
uncommon thing to follow a big trout a half-mile 
downstream — when you can. When you cannot 
you follow him as far as you can. Then if he de- 
clines to stop, you must reluctantly lower your tip. 
Occasionally you can toss your rod to a companion 
and let him follow to his limits. In the mean time 
you have raced below to be ready to receive it in turn. 
This has been done. Billy once hooked a big trout 
that passed thus through four hands. That rod was 
passed, tossed, even thrown from crag to crag, until 
Billy was able to reclaim it at a stretch of slack water, 
and land her fish. 

215 



THE CABIN 

The best flies in this country are the Royal Coach- 
man, the Queen of the Waters, Brown Hackle, 
Montreal, Professor, and Rube Wood, about in the 
order named. Furthermore, these are unsophis- 
ticated fish, and they do not give a hang for delicate 
gradations of hue. If they will not rise to any of 
the above, they will not rise at all. I should never 
carry any others were I to outfit my flybook especially 
for this country. This, in view of the many varieties 
affected by the Eastern fisherman, sounds like pis- 
catorial heresy; but I believe it to be a fact. Indeed, 
as a strictly practical matter, one might go even 
further. Tie in a Royal Coachman and a Brown 
Hackle. If you cannot catch them on one or the 
other of those two flies, the chances are strong that 
the trout are not hungry enough to rise in paying 
numbers to any of the others. 

For I hope I have not unintentionally conveyed 
the idea that fishing is always good. That is no 
more true here than it was in the Garden of Eden. 
A virgin stream is sometimes very poor fishing in- 
deed. For long stretches the conditions of the water 
will be such that the pickings will be very slim. 
**One once in a great while" happens here as else- 
where. And probably here more than elsewhere, 
the fishing hours are apt to be restricted. A great 
many streams are fishable in full sunlight, but often 

216 



TROUT 

the trout will rarely rise except in shadow — and 
there are never friendly clouds in a California summer 
sky. You must wait until the sun has dropped be- 
hind the mountain. Luckily the mountains are 
high. The twilight is no good at all. Just when 
the Eastern fisherman's experience would lead him 
to believe his best sport was about to commence, 
the game is called on account of darkness! I do 
not know why this is; but nine times out of ten it 
comes true. You might as well unjoint your rod 
and get back to camp while you can see the way 
comfortably. 

But when they do rise, they are wonderful ! There 
are no dull moments. And here as in the East all 
the blanks are forgotten. Fisherman's luck! Here's 
the best of it to you! 



217 



FLAPJACK 



XVIII 
FLAPJACK 

FLAPJACK, as you may have gathered, is a 
mule. But in order to get a good notion of 
him you must try to imagine a pretty mule. That is 
of course difficult; but it must be done. 

For Flapjack is of jet and shiny black, save when 
he is cold. Then his fur ruffles up and he resembles 
a plush-covered mule with very dark shadows where 
the nap runs the wrong way. He is small — not 
over thirteen-two — and is built like a deer, with 
clean slender legs, a straight back, deep shoulders, 
proud neck, and a wide forehead in which he stows 
his generous supply of brains. Of course, his ears 
are long, but they are covered with a soft black fuzz, 
and they are wonderfully expressive. If Flapjack 
is particularly pleased, they are held pointing slightly 
back and rigidly parallel. This also means con- 
scious virtue. If he is contentedly walking along 
the trail with nothing much on his mind, those ears 
are hung on smooth-working ball bearings, and 
swing back and forth rythmically with every step. 

221 



THE CABIN 

Now it is the right ear that thus keeps time; then 
the left; finally the two together. Biff! both point 
instantaneously ahead, and you know Flapjack's 
interest has been struck. Nothing could be more 
inquiring or more astonished or more startled, as 
the case may be, than those forward ears. They 
snap into position almost with a click, like the cock- 
ing of a revolver. 

Flapjack moves easily and lightly, and his head 
is always high and his eye roving. Never does he 
slouch along the trail half asleep. Even when he 
takes his earned rest, he never droops all over, as do 
the other animals. One feels his alertness, the 
perfect tension of his smooth muscles even in repose. 
He lifts his feet high and clean, with a little pause 
at the top of each step and a swift down-thrust, 
in the manner of wild animals not too much startled. 
On a rough and dangerous trail he handles each 
hoof separately, and knows where each is to go 
surely and accurately — a horse generally tries to 
place his front feet and lets the hind legs follow as 
they may. I have never seen Flapjack down but 
once, and that was on the slippery glacier. Never 
have I seen him stumble. 

So much for the outer mule. All that is satis- 
factory, of course. When Flapjack has on his full 
regalia he is a proud-looking little animal. His 



FLAPJACK 

halter, bell-collar and breasting are studded with 
bright knobs; his bronze bell, sweet-toned and clear, 
tinkles merrily; his pack rig is of black leather, lined 
generously with yellow sheep's wool; the kyacks 
are of rawhide with the hair on; the tarpaulin is 
khaki-coloured instead of dirty white. But the most 
satisfactory and remarkable thing about Flapjack 
is his intelligence and his disposition. 

Of course he is thoroughly familiar with all the 
details of his business in life : if he were not, he would 
not be worthy of consideration. I can catch him 
easily, not after the fashion of a horse to which one 
walks as to a rooted stump, but after a manner of 
Flapjack's own. When I appear in the meadow 
with a rope in my hand, he first trots in his high- 
stepping way directly toward me, stops, shakes his 
head, runs around me in a half-circle and stops 
again, his nostrils expanded, his head high, showing 
every indication of a full intention to be a wild, bad 
mule. But at my first step in his direction he walks 
directly to me and halts. This is his almost in- 
variable procedure. 

From the moment I bring him near his pack- 
saddle until I unsnap his lead rope, he never moves 
a muscle. I can throw bags, blankets, canvases, 
rattling hardware, ropes, anything and everything 
all over, around, and at him — he will not so much as 

223 



THE CABIN 

bat an eye or wave an ear. I can even drag ropes 
around his hind legs without his jumping forward. 
And, mind you, he is as full of ginger as a cookie. 
When the packing is pronounced completed, he 
nibbles about in the immediate vicinity until I 
mount. Then he falls dutifully in behind, and 
during all the rest of the day he needs no more atten- 
tion to keep him with us than does my saddle horse's 
own tail. Plenty of pack animals will keep in line 
without leading if somebody is ahead and behind 
them. A great many will follow the saddle horses, 
provided there are no other pack-horses with whom 
to play truant. Flapjack will follow anyway. No 
matter how many animals we are driving or how 
much trouble they give us. Flapjack comes along. 
He leaves his home unhesitatingly; he leaves feed. 
I have ridden in the pitch dark without seeing the 
little mule all night, sure that daylight would dis- 
close him teetering along close behind. These 
virtues — to stand well when packed, and to follow 
without fail — are two-thirds of a pack-horse's 
accomplishments. 

The third is to take care of the burden, not to 
scrape it against trees or under limbs, to understand 
that extremely narrow or extremely low places are 
not to be attempted, to be surefooted, and not to get 
rattled in bad places. This virtue, or conglomerate 

224 



FLAPJACK 

of virtues, is more common, and Flapjack possesses 
it in full measure. 

But Flapjack, furthermore, is gentle and friendly 
as a dog. He has never been struck in his life, and 
he does not knov^ what it is to be afraid of those with 
whom he is familiar. One can pull his tail, or rub 
his ear, or crawl around under him for the purpose 
of making some adjustment with absolute confidence. 
When we walk through the meadow Flapjack fairly 
mobs us. He follows close on our heels, he nuzzles 
at our backs, every once in a while he circles to the 
front and stops us. Often on trail I have had him 
catch up and lay his Assyrian nose alongside my 
thigh. Then I would rub him between the eyes or 
pat his ears, and he would fall back contented. 

I am about to relate an example of his desire for 
human company which may land me with the nature- 
fakers. If I were to make Flapjack symbolic of all 
mules, and spell his name Obrayeesee, and indulge 
in many capital letters, I should certainly anticipate 
that fate. However, I must risk it. 

Flapjack, be it premised before the tale begins, 
looks on fences, not as physical hindrances to free- 
dom, but as gentle hints. His masters place those 
easily jumped structures as a species of chalk marks 
to indicate the bounds beyond which they wish 
Flapjack would not stray. As an honourable and 

225 



THE CABIN 

courteous mule, he respects those wishes. But this 
does not prevent his hopping out when he feels Hke 
it, for his slender legs are composed exclusively of 
watch springs. In justice it must be further stated 
that he invariably hops in again. 

One afternoon Billy and I walked over to our 
Supervisor's, leaving two horses and the mule in 
the meadow. Once there, we decided to stay over 
night and return home the next day, a pleasant plan 
which we carried out. About midnight a slight 
shower of rain fell. On our way back, near the top 
of the hill, and a half-mile or so from the Super- 
visor's, we came on a place where a shod mule had 
stamped for some moments in the dirt road. Tracks 
of the animal walking led to this spot; tracks of the 
animal running led back from it. These marks 
had been made since the shower, and hence after 
midnight. 

The tracks led in our direction, turned off at our 
trail, led to our fence, and hopped over. There 
was Flapjack feeding in company with the two 
horses. Some time after midnight — and therefore 
nine or ten hours after we had left home — he had 
become worried over us, had jumped the fence, 
followed our trail nearly to the Supervisor's, been 
seized with a panic either over being alone or at 
something, and returned to his friends the horses. 

226 



FLAPJACK 

Flapjack can follow a trail by scent. What other 
solution can you suggest ? If we had taken the 
horses with us, the affair would have been very 
commonplace, for all members of the equine race 
detest solitude. But he left his customary com- 
panions to follow us up. 

When I am working around the meadow I some- 
times have hardly room to swing my axe or hammer. 
The little mule wants to smell of everything as it 
is constructed. When I used to do laundry near 
the fence, his soft black-and-gray muzzle was fairly 
in the tub. The other day I added a rail to the top 
of the fence. When Flapjack came up from the 
foot of the meadow he noticed the change at once, 
and smelled that improvement over from one end to 
the other. None of the horses paid any attention 
to it. 

But though he is thus gentle and friendly, you 
must not get away with the idea that he is like most 
equine pets, spoiled, cross, lazy, pampered, and full 
of egotistical and selfish little tricks. No stranger 
can get near him. He will circle about the intruder 
with loud snorts of disdain. 

"One thing," said California John after a few 
moments' experience. "There ain't no road agent 
goin' to get hold of your pack, unless they shoot 
that mule." 

227 



THE CABIN 

So independent, free, graceful, and spirited is 
the little animal that he has always seemed to me less 
a domestic animal trained and constrained to ser- 
vice, as some wild creature that condescends through 
a great gentleness. He performs his task because 
he likes it. No one who has watched Flapjack on 
the trail could doubt it. In our local rides he always 
accompanies us, just as the dogs do, but without 
accoutrements, of course. He does not care nearly 
so much to go unburdened. When he finds his 
pack-saddle is to be used, he is delighted, and shows 
it plainly. Bullet, my veteran mountain horse, is 
the same way. At home he gets grain and hay and 
luxurious living and gallops on the beach. Camping 
he has to rustle for grass, and the labour is hard. 
Yet he much prefers camping. This is conclusively 
proved by his delight when I get out a pack-saddle. 
He whickers and capers around the corral, and 
shakes his head with joy. Not that he expects to 
carry the pack-saddle — that is beneath Bullet's 
dignity — but he knows that pack-saddles mean 
trips into the open. 

It is a promotion to become a saddle animal. 
That I have observed again and again. Old Me- 
thuselah, who had been a saddle animal when he was 
young, used to cheer up and put on a heap of style 
when I would ride him over to the mill occasionally. 

228 



FLAPJACK 

One day I decided to break Flapjack as a saddler — 
he is just the right size for Billy. We saddled him 
up, put on a war halter, and stood by for trouble. 
Flapjack is not mean, but any animal will tear 
around a little the first time a man climbs on his 
back. So I swung aboard carefully. As soon as I 
was in the saddle Flapjack marched off, tail up, ears 
rigidly parallel, head aloft. He walked straight 
ahead until I hauled him around to a new direction: 
then straight ahead again. The spectators shouted 
with delight over his air of swollen pride. That 
was all the breaking Flapjack ever got — or needed. 

Flapjack is fond of scenery, or at least it interests 
him in some way. Whenever our way leads to the 
brink of one of the huge box canons, or out on a 
shoulder of the mountain so that one can see as 
over the kingdoms of the earth. Flapjack never fails 
to march to the farthest overhanging point. There 
he stands and looks, right, left, ahead, and down, 
for as long as we will wait for him. I do not pretend 
to state the basis of his interest, but the facts are as 
I tell you. Figure it out to suit yourself. 

When we get in at night, first of all Flapjack in- 
dulges in a dusty and satisfying roll. The horses 
do likewise, and at once start feeding, for the day 
has been long, and a horse hungers even more 
quickly than a man. 

229 



THE CABIN 

But no matter how tired and hollow he may be, 
Flapjack first of all makes a complete circuit of the 
meadow. Then he circles it back in the woods. 
Having thus assured himself that nothing is going 
to catch him unaware, he returns and begins his 
meal. This trait is to me another interesting rem- 
nant of the wild-animal instinct that seems so strong 
in this particular mule. 

In the course of the day's journey Flapjack con- 
ceives his place to be number two in the order of 
march. Of course his master leads, but he objects 
strongly even to other humans getting that coveted 
second place. To gain it he fights and schemes. 
Some poor weak-spirited pack-horses are easy. A 
nip, a snarl of the white teeth, a laying back of the 
long ears — that poor trash is shown its place. But 
saddle horses are haughty animals, and their riders 
object to dust. Flapjack must resort to strategy. 
He makes long detours through the brush or trees 
in order to pop in when chance offers him a gap. 
He takes short cuts for the same purpose. When 
he has apparently given up the struggle and seems 
to be reconciled to his fate, he is nevertheless alert 
for the smallest chance to move up one. And when 
he has succeeded he snuggles into his place with so 
comical an air of content that his victim, if a man, 
generally laughs good-naturedly and concedes the 

230 



FLAPJACK 

point. As for another horse, I'd like to see him 
get the tip of a nose between Flapjack and the 
leading animal. 

Demijohn is Flapjack's intimate friend. On the 
trail that haughty and bored animal leads the way 
for the little mule. In pasture he tells where to go 
and when to go there. Flapjack knows more now, 
in his youth, than Demijohn will ever guess at. 
Nevertheless, he obeys the horse blindly, and defers 
to him, and looks up to him, and worships him. 
Never but once has he disputed authority. On 
that occasion I saw him deliver the only two kicks 
he ever accomplished. Previous to the incident 1 
had come to imagine that Flapjack had not a kick 
in him. 

Naturally when any tidbit, such as a handful of 
grain, is fed the two together, they eat a moment or 
so in company, then Demijohn lays back his ears 
lazily, and Flapjack moves aside in all meekness, 
without objection, humbly, as a disciple from his 
master. 

But of one thing has Flapjack proved inordinately 
fond. On a great occasion we received a sack of 
sweet corn on the ear. It had been passed along 
in the kind-hearted mountain fashion, and by the 
time it reached us had travelled through many hands 
and by many methods. When we had eaten thereof 

231 



THE CABIN 

with greater joy than any but those who know only 
the canned variety can reaHze, we dumped the shucks 
and cobs into a box and carried them out to the 
horses. Whiskeyjack was absent at the time, so 
only Demi and Flapjack were there to partake. 
Flapjack was delighted. This beat barley, oats, 
hay, carrots, sugar. And when, after a mouthful 
or so. Demijohn laid his ears back sulkily, and 
nipped at the mule as a gentle hint. Flapjack de- 
liberately turned around and kicked him twice. 
The horse was so astounded that he retired down 
the meadow in a sulk, leaving Flapjack to finish 
the corn alone! 

I have had some comical experiences with Flap- 
jack. On one occasion it became necessary to cross 
a river flowing from a lake. It was a deep and rather 
wide river, but slow. The obvious thing to do was 
to unpack, carry the stuflF over in front of my saddle, 
and swim the mule unburdened. But that necessi- 
tated many trips, it was late, and I was tired. I 
hitched my riata around Flapjack's neck, and started 
in. Immediately the kyacks filled. Their weight 
sunk the mule. When he hit bottom I heaved. He 
surged up and forward, blew the water from his 
nostrils — and promptly sank again. Once more 
I heaved. We repeated the process. Thus, in long 
watery bounds we made the passage, poor old Flap- 

232 



FLAPJACK 

jack alternating between the bottom and the top. 
Of course Demijohn swam easily enough with 
only my own weight atop. When we scrambled 
out the other bank Flapjack snorted again and again 
with indignation and disgust. 

About once a week or so, when we are at the 
Cabin, we saddle up and ride to the mill for mail 
and supplies. Flapjack transports the latter. The 
trip is a staid, sober, and accustomed one. We never 
bother to pack very securely. But one day, on 
returning laden with potatoes, we found cattle near 
our place. Without thinking of Flapjack we set 
about driving them out. This necessitated fast 
riding through the timber; sudden stops, turns and 
jumps; shouts; the excited barking of the dogs; and 
the crashing flight of the half-wild cattle. Flapjack, 
left alone in the middle of the road, looked about him 
in vast astonishment.* Then all at once down 
went his head, up went his tail, and off he sailed, 
bucking at every jump. Father laughs every time 
he tells of that bombardment of potatoes. Here, 
there and everywhere he went, until the excited 
jangling of the little bell died in the distance. And 
then after a while, instead of going home, back he 
trotted high-stepping as usual, and lined up at our 
sides with an air that plainly said: 

*My father was eye-witness of the performance. 



THE CABIN 

"Well, we did have a high old time, didn't we?" 
I believe he thought we were all out for a grand 
lark, and wanted to get in the game; for he was not 
in the least frightened. 

I have known Flapjack four years — since he 
was a three-year-old — and I have not a single fault 
to find with him nor a criticism to make of him. I 
do not know anybody else of whom unqualifiedly 
I can say that. That is why he has a chapter all 
to himself. 



234 



THE ETHICAL CODE OF 
CALIFORNIA JOHN 



XIX 

THE ETHICAL CODE OF 
CALIFORNIA JOHN 

CALIFORNIA JOHN is an individual more or 
less travelled. He has been to various places 
of which perhaps you have never heard; such as 
Honey Lake, and Hoopa Valley, and the country 
of the Siskiyou. To be sure he has never visited 
Paris, London, or Berlin, as we have; but then, he 
has at least heard of them, and that is where he is 
ahead of us. His wanderings began in the early 
days when the foothill country was full of placer 
gold. When so minded he can tell of queer things. 
For instance, there is a canon of the Chiricahuas 
in Arizona, happily misnamed Paradise Valley, 
where a gang of Mexican cattle-rustlers abode — for 
a while. Then the rustling abruptly ceased. Para- 
dise Valley became a peaceful range camp, occupied 
but twice a year at the time of the roundups. 

*'And every cow-puncher there has the top part 
of a skull for a washbowl," says California John. 

With it all he still loves the Sierras the best, and 

2Z7 



THE CABIN 

has homed to them in his approaching age. Never- 
theless the single thing that impressed him most was 
the Grand Caiion of the Colorado. 

"That place," said he to us one day, "is self- 
actin'! All this," he waved his hand abroad, "has 
to be taken care of or it gets ruined by somebody. 
That's what we rangers are tryin' to do. But the 
Grand Cafion takes care of herself." He slid from 
his saddle and squatted on his heels as was invaria- 
bly his habit when really earnest talk was forward. 
"My idee is about like this," said he: "I believe 
the Lord made that place just for Himself. All the 
rest of the earth He gave to mankind. 'Go to it,' 
says He. 'Do what you want. Go the limit. Cut 
down the trees, and dam up the rivers, and paint 
advertising signs on and over everythin' you can 
stick a brush to, I ain't in favour of these proceed- 
ings: but it's up to you.' And I reckon we've done 
it — Injins, buffalo, pine woods, Niagara Falls — 
all the rest of it. But the Grand Cafion the Lord 
made for Himself. There ain't no water, there 
ain't no ways of gettin' around, there ain't no pos- 
sible way of paintin' a sign you could make out with 
the Lick telescope. They can't dynamite it for 
stone, or plant parks in it, or build things in it." 

"They've got a big modern hotel on the Rim 
now," I suggested. 

238 



THE ETHICAL CODE 

"Oh, yes," he waved that lauded structure aside. 
"They can put up things, of course. But a full- 
grown World's Fair goin' full blast with the blower 
on you wouldn't even see across that Caiion. That 
little crack will look just the same as it does to-day 
a thousand years from now, when our descendants 
are wearin' sky-blue pants with ruffles on 'em and 
otherwise attractin' horrified attention from the 
angels." 

We laughed together over this, for California 
John never takes his extravagances seriously. Then 
abruptly he became solemn. 

"Son," said he," the gold light of evening on these 
mountains is a mighty fine thing, but if you don't 
believe all I've been sayin' you ought to see the 
Cafion at sunset." 

"I've seen it," said I. 

"You remember how she changes, then, slow 
and solemn, Hke the shift of scenes in a theatre. 
Only there ain't no hurry about it. He don't care 
whether folks has to catch a train, or it's gettin* 
chilly out there on the Rim, or dinner is ready. 
And do you recollect how the peaks come out from 
the other Cafion wall, and draw back again, one 
by one ? It's just as if they was answering roll-call. 
And all the colours in the world come out to answer 
roll-call too, and wait a minute, and then melt back 

239 



THE CABIN 

again. The Lord has built Him a fine place; and 
He's fixed it so we can't never bother it. I think 
it's mighty good of Him to let us come and look at 
it." 

"Why didn't you stay there," I asked, "if you like 
it so well?" 

" It takes a mighty good man or a mighty dumb 
fool to live by the Canon always. It's like sheep 
that way. It takes apostles or Basques to get 
along." 

"You seem to have a pretty good streak of religion 
in you," I remarked in all sincerity. 

"Me!" cried California John in vast astonish- 
ment. Then he chuckled. "You may not believe 
it, but I did get religion once. It didn't take, 
though." 

He came to a dead stop, his eyes full of reminis- 
cence. I offered him a square of sulphur matches, 
whereupon he quite mechanically rolled himself a 
Durham cigarette. After the first puflF, he went on. 

"It was 'way up in the Stanislaus country at the 
time everybody was looking for gold. I was a young 
feller then, and hadn't learned much sense. My 
mother was alive then, and my two sisters, and 
they put in most of their time worryin' about how 
my soul was comin' out. That didn't even get to 

me; but one day along come a girl " 

240 



THE ETHICAL CODE 

He paused and his eye grew vacant. 

"I've plumb forgot her name!" he exclaimed, 
regretfully, after a moment. "Anyway, she was 
number one on my list. Nothing doing. She was 
religious from soda to hock, and she didn't look 
with no favour on my efforts toward polishin* up 
the flames of hell. 

"Then one of these yere shoutin' evangelists came 
to camp. They don't have many of 'em these days 
— crazy, long-legged cusses, with long black clothes, 
plug hats, and language enough to stock a hundred 
sheep camps and a water-tank. My girl went in 
strong on the revival he started. First thing I knew 
about it was a rise in the temperature, and sweet 
smiles, and other encouragin' signs. For a minute 
I thought I was makin' headway. Then she sprung 
revival on me, and I see at once it was just to get me 
to go. 

"I went. The show didn't hit me very strong 
until along toward the middle. Then a bright idea 
come to me. All at once up I got, sailed down the 
aisle, and flopped into the bench with the rest of 
the saved." 

The Ranger turned on me a humorously mis- 
chievous eye. 

"Well, I tell you there was a sensation! Worst 
sinner in the state saved! I wrastled and had the 

241 



THE CABIN 

proper allowance of duck fits, same as I'd seen the 
others do. Then I come through. Hallelujah! 
You bet you! The tinkling cymbals sounded all 
right! 

"Well, I walked home with Anna Maria, or 
whatever her name was, and I give her the holy kiss 
of brotherhood. But when I sifted into the house 
I run against such joy over the brand plucked from 
the burnin' that I got a hard jolt. My mother and 
two sisters were so plumb tickled pink, that all at 
once it come to me what Td overlooked before. I'd 
got converted: and now it was up to me to make 
good ! 

**I climbed to my room as soon as I could get 
away. 

"'Look here,' says I to me, *you're elected. 
What are you goin' to do about it .? Are you goin' 
to break three trustin' lovin' hearts .? Or are you 
goin* to quit bosses, drink, poker, and everythin' 
that enables a man to wobble through this monot- 
onous existence .? ' 

"You see, Anna Maria didn't figure. I reckon 
the holy kiss of brotherhood didn't come up to 
anticipations. 

"It was a hard situation. I didn't precisely see 
me with a long-term halo; but still I wasn't brute 
enough to kill all the family rejoicin* with a club. 

242 



THE ETHICAL CODE 

Finally I got out a pencil and paper and did some 
close figurin'. In fact I figured all night. I made 
out a schedule for what you might call a gradual 
backslide. In a week I was to let out a little in- 
advertent cuss. In two weeks I was due to play a 
quiet game of penny ante. And so on. I sort of 
broke the news to them gentle. In six months I 
was due for a real hell ripper. You bet it was a good 
one." 

He squinted sideways at the sugar-pines. 

"It's sometimes kind of hard to live up to these 
fellows, too," he exclaimed irrelevantly. "Speakin* 
of that, isn't it funny how a young fellow has trouble 
with just livin' .? He's got to take the whole thing 
apart, and see how it goes. When he gets a little 
age into him, he just takes things as they come; but 
when he's young he's got to know all the whys. 
Now, as you can see, I never was much on religion, 
but a man's got to have something or other to go by 
or he gets as shiftless as a Digger." 

"A code of ethics," I suggested. 

"That's it. After you git it you just use it and 
forget it, same as fingers. Never notice that you do 
have fingers, but if you'll take the trouble to notice, 
you'll see that a baby is plumb curious about them. 
But while you're getting it, you have lots of troubles, 
and make heaps of experiments, and are dead 

243 



THE CABIN 

serious — and ridiculous. I got up a wonder of a 
code of ethics once." 

"What was it.'"' I encouraged him. 

"A man hates to tell how much of a fool he was 
once, even when he's all over it," grinned California 
John. "For a general star-spangled idiocy that 
nobody had ever thought of before, I sure took all 
medals, cash prizes, and silver casters." 

"Well, only the sheep follow a flock," I said. 

"Them — and sheepmen and buzzards," added 
California John, with the grim distaste of the cattle- 
man or ranger for wool. "Well, back in the fifties 
I made me up an account between me and the Lord. 
Whenever I did anything I ought not to, I charged 
myself up with a good stiff fine, and costs, anywhere 
from two bits to five dollars dependin' on how deep 
I'd got in. Gamblin' was two bits a chip; drinks 
dos reales per, and so on. It wasn't only what you'd 
call police-court cases, either. I rung in fightin', 
and meanness, and lyin', and all sorts of general 
cussedness. It was surprisin' what it came to by 
the end of the year. I wish I remembered exactly, 
but it was surprisin'." 

"What did you do with the money V* I asked him. 

"That's the point. I used to figure out on the 
other side where the Lord hadn't treated me square. 
I figured out He ought to send the rain, and dry 

244 



THE ETHICAL CODE 

calvin' weather, and should hold His hand in regard 
to fire and flood. I charged Him with them things 
— the actual damages, you sabe." California John 
threw back his head and laughed with whole-hearted 
enjoyment. "In a year I had the Lord so far behind 
the game that I could have drunk myself to death 
at two bits fine a drink and then been certain sure of 
salvation by some few round dollars. So I give it 
up, and come to the conclusion that a man was 
supposed to be decent in spite of tribulation." 

"What did you find the best practical scheme 
finally }" I asked as he rose to go, 

"Oh, just live along," repHed Cahfornia John. 



245 



THE SURVEYORS 



XX 

THE SURVEYORS 

ONE morning in the early fall I rode out along 
the ridges, over ravines, across meadow^s, until 
I cut the old shake road to our north. There I dis- 
mounted. The day was crisp and cool, so I selected 
a spot full in the sun and sat down to wait. After 
a very long time, a toiling, creaking vehicle crawled 
into view. From it descended four men. After 
depositing bed-rolls, baggage, and instruments, the 
vehicle departed. 

The first of the strangers was a man just past 
middle age, handsome in an aquiline, long mous- 
tached fashion, a trifle inclined to an ofl'ice shortness 
of wind at first, expressing himself with a Western 
heartiness of manner, humorous, absolutely good- 
natured, and — as it proved — game as a badger. 
He carried a bulky wooden case which, when opened, 
proved to contain a transit. This he fitted to its 
tripod and slanted over his shoulder, nor thereafter 
did he ever relinquish it. 

His chief assistant was a man of twenty-five or 

249 



THE CABIN 

thirty, alert in manner, very talkative, moving quick- 
ly and nervously, full of suggestion, and so anxious 
to do things right that he generally had them figured 
out all wrong before his instructions were half pro- 
nounced. A running fire of comment on whatever 
happened to be doing further insulated him from 
outside admonition. He wore a little stifF-brimmed 
hat at an angle; and from his general manner I 
imagine in his proper haunts he is either a scrapper 
or a bluffer — probably the former. With it all 
there was no real harm in him, and he always meant 
so well and was so anxious to please that one could 
not remain vexed. He was as irrepressible as a 
puppy dog. Inside of ten minutes he was calling 
me "my boy." Frozen out of that, he went back 
to "Mr. White," slipped on to "White," graduated 
to "Whitey," and ended at "my boy" again; exactly 
like the puppy dog discouraged violently from lick- 
ing one's face. In the course of the days that fol- 
lowed, I could almost tell the time of the clock by 
the manner of his address. "My boy" was due 
about eleven o'clock, and again about four. At 
those hours I nearly always had to bestow a little 
attention on Tom in order to set his vocatives aright. 
The third member of the party was an Indian 
named Jack. He was a good Indian. His handling 
of an axe was excellent, and he could take a line and 

250 



THE SURVEYORS 

lay it out with his eye almost as accurately as another 
could have done so with a pocket compass. It is a 
comparatively simple matter to go to a point due 
north of your transit man when the ground is open 
or on a single slope. But when the sight through the 
transit is to leap a cafion full of trees and brush, 
and is to dodge far up the opposite slope through the 
big rocks, it requires considerable judgment to 
thread your way over and through and around all 
these obstacles and then finally to plant yourself 
in the line of sight. Furthermore Jack was intelli- 
gent. He learned quickly. The reversal of the 
rod for long-target readings he fathomed by observa- 
tion before Tom had learned how by instruction. 
He caught on where and when to blaze trees along 
the line. And he was always ready to work. 

Not so, Charley, the other Indian. Charley was 
the best-natured animal I ever encountered; and he 
was exceedingly comical to look upon. Otherwise 
he was not valuable. He had a face round and 
shiny as a copper harvest moon, with a few spiky 
little hairs by way of moustache indicating an ap- 
proximate centre. His blue jeans trousers hung 
around his hips, and above them sagged the most 
wonderful and wobbly corporation ever partly 
concealed beneath a cotton shirt. Charley's sole 
job was as a mark to back-sight on. All he had to 

251 



THE CABIN 

do was to stand bolt upright, holding a peeled wand 
perpendicular to a stake, while the Surveyor verified 
his instrument's direction by squinting back along 
the line he had already made. Somebody had to 
perform this simple task; and it might as well be 
Charley. After the Surveyor had waved both arms 
to signify "all right," Charley would wallow and 
heave and pant until he had caught up with the tran- 
sit. Then he would sink on a log, wipe his brow, 
and grin with so amiable a triumph that we could not 
help laughing. 

Nevertheless, there were times when the Indian 
in Charley flashed forth a hint of its quality. Once 
our line ran us two or three thousand feet down the 
mountain-side over a fearfully rough and steep 
country. When we had tied to our corner down 
there, we had to cHmb back. It was a grind, for 
the brush was thick, the slope very steep, and the 
high altitude caught at our wind. In the intervals of 
rest we had a good deal of fun over Charley's predic- 
ament. Pretty soon that aborigine dropped behind. 

"Charley goin' die," remarked Jack cheerfully. 

We toiled on. After a long time we came in sight 
of the top of the ridge. On the summit stood Char- 
ley, who greeted us with a loud and joyous whoop. 
It is only fair to state that we were at the time headed 
toward lunch. 

252 



THE SURVEYORS 

Charley was always able to accomplish marvellous 
feats when it came to a question of quitting time or 
of grub. The Supervisor tells a story of having 
once seen Charley run down a brush rabbit! It 
happened generally that we finished our day's work 
at one of the old survey corners. That made a good 
starting-point for the next morning. Charley's 
thick head gradually evolved the idea that, in this 
game, corner meant quit. One morning we finished 
a half-mile line about ten o'clock, and at once set 
about looking for the old witness trees of the "es- 
tablished" corner. These, as I shall later explain, 
are often exceedingly difficult to find. Charley was 
very active in the search — and successful! He led us 
to those old witness trees with pride, and capered 
with delight, and grinned expansively, and generally 
acted as tickled as a dog that has caught a rat. We 
made our computations, and arose to continue. 

"What!" cried Charley aghast; "we no quit 'um 
here ^ He corner!" 

Poor old Charley could not understand, and for 
the rest of the day he entertained dark suspicions of 
us. We were not playing fair. Here he had won 
the game by finding a corner, and we declined to 
quit! 

Charley was certainly a marvellous eater. We 
lunched one day at the lumber camp. It was a good 

253 



THE CABIN 

meal, and varied. Charley ate one thing at a time. 
He would heap his plate full of meat, and eat that. 
Then he piled it with sweet potatoes, and devoured 
them. In turn he got away with a plateful each of 
meat, potatoes, corn, bread and gravy, tomatoes. 
Then he passed on to desserts — three kinds of pie, 
doughnuts, bread pudding, preserved apricots, 
stewed plums. He finished with a chunk of very 
sweet chocolate cake, and pushed back his chair 
with a sigh. Then his twinkling little eyes fell on 
a dish, hitherto concealed from him, at the other 
end of the table. It contained a mess of red beans 
swimming in watery grease, and several chunks of 
salt side-pork. 

"Pass *um beans!" said Charley firmly. 

Our task was to run a certain portion of the line 
around the company's timber holdings. To do so 
we had first of all to find a section corner from which 
to start. This was an affair of some difficulty. 

Probably most of you know what a corner is. 
For the benefit of others I will describe briefly. 

The original Government surveys are oflficial for 
the country they covered and for the details they 
established. Nothing they did can be changed or 
altered. The field notes are on record at the land 
offices, and the later surveyor must follow them. 
Thus the earlier surveys had to do merely with the 

254 




J^DOOO.^ 



THE SURVEYORS 

outside boundaries of the townships, and the corners 
of the outside tier of sections were marked and 
described. Later the section lines inside that town- 
ship were run. Then all the section corners were 
established, but always with reference to the towp- 
ship lines. If the second surveyor, running a true 
line west from a section corner through the middle 
of the township, should happen to come out at the 
corresponding corner on the other side, well and 
good. He was lucky. But if he cut the township 
line north or south of that corner, he must modify 
his line and all his corners. In this fashion an 
initial mistake means a whole county cut bias, but 
that is not permitted to matter. Less confusion 
results from a cat-a-corner section than from a 
multiplicity of corners. 

The establishment of section boundaries is as far 
as the Government goes. When, as in the present 
case, the private owner wants to run through various 
sections, following his boundaries, he engages a 
county surveyor who establishes his interior one- 
quarter or one-eighth corners, but always with due 
respect to the results attained by the men who have 
preceded him. 

Let us now return to the original surveyor. He 
ran through our mountains back in the early seven- 
ties. From his starting corner he ran a "true line" 

2SS 



THE CABIN 

north, say. At the end of a half-mile he stopped 
to establish his first quarter-section corner. This 
nine times out of ten consisted of something like a 
"post 3 feet long, 4 inches square, marked | Cor. 
Sec. VI, set in mound of rocks 3 ft. across base, 
from which bears N. by 5° W. sugar-pine 42 inches 
dia. marked on S. side J Cor. B. T., and S. 18° E. fir 
1 2 in. dia. marked on N. side J Cor. B. T. " So read 
the field notes. This means generally that the sur- 
veyor in question had his men stick up the post, lay 
around it half a dozen stones — rarely more — and 
blaze two "witness trees" marked as above. He is 
supposed, moreover, to dig two pits north and south 
of the corner as additional landmarks. Invariably 
he writes down *'pits impracticable," which relieves 
him of much labour. A section corner is the same 
except that the post is larger, and there are four 
witness trees — at each point of the compass — 
instead of two. Note these facts: that "the mound 
of rocks" peters down to as few as will surround the 
post; that in my experience the pits are invariably 
"impracticable"; that the witness or bearing trees 
(hence the "B. T.") are blazed low where a man 
can swing an axe most comfortably. 

Time passes. The manzanita, chinquapin, and 
snowbrush perhaps spread their mantle abroad. 
Snow, rain, wind, frost exercise turn-about their 

256 



THE SURVEYORS 

disintegrating influences. Sheep and cattle pass, 
thrusting the beautiful, peeled new post from the 
perpendicular. The next heavy snow flattens it 
to earth. The "mound of rocks" sinks into the 
leaf mould, covers itself with moss, drapes itself in 
brush. The fresh blazes on the witness trees first 
glaze themselves over with a transparent film of 
pitch; then slowly year by year the bark draws its 
edges together across the wound until at last the gap 
is closed. Underneath, the white tree wood adds 
its annual rings, until at the last all that is to be 
discovered of that original broad, fresh carved sur- 
face is a narrow perpendicular wrinkle, surrounded 
by bark the least bit lighter in tone than the rest. 
In all probability the growth of the forest has further- 
more risen to screen it. And that is the "corner'* 
you must find before your work can be accepted. 

It is fun, this game. You have in hand your hasty 
field notes, jotted down in the absorption of the 
day's work nearly forty years ago. It babbles of 
brooks "3 links wide, course S. W.," and of trees 
"thirty inches dia." The brooks have long since 
dried into stringer meadows, perhaps; and the trees 
probably look back with scorn on their youthful 
slenderness of the thirty inches. The party is 
scattered in all directions through the fragrant 
forest, spying microscopically for the faintest in- 

257 



THE CABIN 

dication that man has preceded it into this apparently 
virgin fastness. To the novice the whole affair of 
that long-past labour seems so futile! All summer 
these men worked, and made their records for all 
time; and in the short space of two generations the 
forest has calmly obliterated them. What would 
another generation of it mean .? We must be just 
in time to secure these old records from total 
extinction, thinks the novice. 

And finally, one or the other of the party utters a 
whoop. We all gather to his call. In triumph he 
points to the wrinkle of the old blaze. "Sugar pine 
42 in. diameter" reads the Surveyor. "She's grown 
since. Now rustle out your fir." That is a short 
matter. 

And then comes the wonder of it all. Jack sets 
to work chopping carefully above and below the old 
scar. Inch after inch he cuts into the tree, the white 
chips flying. With a final wrench, a long slab falls 
away. There is the weather-beaten old blaze, 
coated with the transparent varnish of the dried 
pitch, its carving as distinct and clear-cut as the day 
it was made. And on the slab of solid wood Jack 
has cut out are those carved letters reversed and in 
relief, like printers' type. I have seen such slabs 
as much as eight inches thick. The tree has taken 
up its growth as though nothing had happened, but 

258 



THE SURVEYORS 

first it spread its thin varnish between the new wood 
and the old in order that for all time the Record 
might be preserved. As long as the forest shall 
endure, so long will that record stand, so long will 
the first man's successes and mistakes, his care and 
his carelessness, the slip of his scribing tool be 
cherished on the tablets of the Witness. The next 
generation would only have to chop a little deeper; 
that is all. 

In the mean time the rest of us have been prowling 
around the brush while the Surveyor sets his transit 
to determine the exact location of the corner by the 
directions from the witness trees. In the middle of 
a bunch of chinquapins we stumble over three or 
four scattered stones. It seems incredible that 
these should represent the "mound of rocks," yet 
in a moment Jack holds up a little fragment of dried, 
cracked and decaying wood. It is exactly like the 
thousands of limb fragments scattered everywhere, 
except that, among almost precisely similar scorings, 
we make out two straight lines at an angle to each 
other. Worms do not score in straight lines. There- 
fore we know that we are looking upon the marks of 
the old surveyor's scribe; that they are some part of 
that "J Cor. Sec. VI"; and that this fragment lying 
in the hollow of Jack's hand represents the **post 
3 feet long and 4 inches square." 

259 



THE CABIN 

It is exceedingly interesting thus to follow up a 
man after a lapse of forty years. Doing the same 
work that he did, and in the same way, it is as easy 
to read his day as though he had passed only the 
month before. He made his petty mistakes, and 
was unaware of them, or forgot them; the forest 
remembered. We can tell when he was getting 
tired; where he guessed; where he shrugged away 
little responsibilities and accuracies. It was always 
very evident where one man's survey left off and 
another's began. The individuality of the work 
was apparent. 

"Ran east on true line between Sections 24 and 
25," went the notes, "79 chains 65 links. Estab- 
lished ^ corner at 40 chains." Alas for veracity! So 
it was reported, so paid. The maps were filed and 
accumulated dust. Perhaps the surveyor has grown 
gray, and celebrated, and bigger than the old, wild 
job through the wilderness: who knows.? But now 
after forty years the forest silently bears witness 
against him. Old surveyor, you did not run 79 
chains 65 links east. You ran 40 chains and 
established your quarter-corner, and went on 800 
feet. Then it was between three and four of an 
October afternoon; you looked down the deep hole 
into which the line dropped. It was too late, you 
were too tired, to tackle that five hundred yards or 

260 



THE SURVEYORS 

so. You did not want to come away back there 
next day just for that short distance; so you sat you 
down, probably on top this very rock, and computed 
how far it must be to the township line! 

How do we know ? Because the corner is actually 
40 chains from the west; we found it so. But it is 
not within five hundred feet of 79 chains and 65 
links from the township line. This happened to be 
a "short section," and you would have placed the 
quarter stake two hundred and fifty feet farther 
west, had you measured the whole distance. As for 
the rest, we know where you must have started; 
you would have arrived at the bluff by the middle 
of the afternoon; this rock is the handiest on which 
to sit; and your field notes show that the scene of your 
next work lay, not near here, but across the town- 
ship. Besides, we felt pretty tired ourselves when 
we looked down into that hole. 

We were up and out very early. The crew stayed 
at the lumber camp, while I, of course, lived at the 
Cabin. Thus we had to converge at the point where 
we had left our work the night before. At sundown, 
or a little before, we would quit. Then it became 
necessary to cut across country to our respective 
habitations. 

In this a curious distinction made itself evident: — 
that between riding through a country with the 

261 



THE CABIN 

sole object of getting somewhere, and surveying a 
mathematically straight line. 

In one case you pay slight attention to details and 
much to generalities. You care little for the lesser 
landmarks, such as burned stubs, curious rocks, 
and the like. No matter how unusual they may be, 
your recollection of them is likely to be duplicated 
a dozen times a day. If you depend on them, you 
are speedily lost. But the direction of main ridges 
and the general trend of their laterals, the course of 
streams, the situation of "pockets," the slopes of 
the country, "the lay of the land,'* in short, are 
of the utmost importance. All day you are busily 
engaged in constructing a mental-relief map on 
which you can look down and to which you can 
refer new features as you come across them. 

In a country of broad outlooks this is not difficult. 
The nearest peak will furnish you a vantage-ground 
from which to understand the framework for a 
week's journeying. Then you are equipped to 
plunge down into the canons and forests. Even if 
everything goes wrong, and you get all tangled up, 
you can, by a little earnest visualizing, fit the dis- 
crepancies into the plan of what you have actually 
seen. 

But in a densely forested mountain country the 
task has an added difficulty in that you will be forced 

262 



THE SURVEYORS 

to substitute, for this first bird's-eye view, a synthesis 
of your own. You must bring to your assistance all 
your experience. From the single bone you must, 
like Cuvier, construct the whole animal. Such a 
combination of ridge and water-source must in this 
sort of country mean such a general scheme of 
things. Then you keep your eyes open for corrob- 
oration. If that corroboration fails, or if your 
hypothesis is flatly denied by the next hard physical 
fact, you must figure out a new one on the basis of 
what you know about all three. The test comes 
when, trusting in the mental-relief map you have 
constructed out of fragmentary operations, you 
strike across country you have never seen, to reach 
some spot you have never visited. 

Nothing affords one greater satisfaction than to 
find one's reasoning has been correct. Nothing is 
more confusing than to fail. Nevertheless, practice 
and experience give most men a considerable facility. 
Of course they do not analyze matters as I have done, 
but the elements of the case are always the same. 
Such men are said to have a good sense of direction. 
They have — plus a heap of experience. 

While I am on the subject, let me add one word: 
no man lives who cannot be lost somewhere and 
sometime. The surer he is that he will never get 
lost anywhere at any time, the surer I would be in 

263 



THE CABIN 

regard to the truth of my statement as respects that 
particular man. Of course a woodsman would 
never stay lost; but the time surely comes when the 
country is strange and the ways out absolutely do not 
exist. A few moments' abstraction or inattention 
at a critical point will do it, especially if the in- 
attention is complete — that is, if the subconscious 
mind, too, is absent from its post. When a man 
tells me he has never been lost, I conclude one of 
two things: either he has not had really extended 
experience, or he is not entirely frank, either with 
himself or with me. 

When following a transit, however, the opposite 
state of affairs obtains. Here you are tied to your 
instrument. However the country lies, you go 
due north — or south, or east, or west, as the case 
may be. Generalities are of no interest except as 
their features cross the narrow straight line of your 
progress — except as they interpose cafions, ravines, 
streams, brush, or hills to your onward march. Your 
task is to open a straight "sight'* for the surveyor. 
You are very much interested in small details; in 
fact, a single feathery twig may blot the crossbars 
of the glass. It is a game of almost complete ab- 
sorption. When night falls you look about you on 
a strange country. Between this and your last 
observation for your mental-relief map, a day's 

264 



THE SURVEYORS 

work has intervened. You straighten your back 
and look about you. 

"Well, which way home ?" is the invariable ques- 
tion, and it is well to guess right, for darkness is 
near at hand. 

It is a game, like the hunt for old corners, and its 
winning brings a mild victor's satisfaction, as well 
as a warm and early supper. 

The day's work itself was full of variety. On 
arriving at our last station of the day before, we at 
once prepared for the next "sight." Tom, with his 
brilliantly checkered rod, went ahead. Jack and 
I cut out anything that interfered with the clear 
sight through the little transit telescope. Some- 
times we had luck. Tom could retire six or seven 
hundred feet down a long fresh aisle or across a 
caiion. Again the big trees and rocks, or the brows 
of hills, or a tangle too large to cut out would bring 
the rodman to within a few feet of the instrument. 
Jack and I swung our axes for an hour at a time. 
Again we had nothing to do but saunter along the 
high, open, rocky ridges, occasionally blazing a tree 
to indicate the course of the boundary. Always the 
Surveyor clung stoutly to his transit. 

The Surveyor, as 1 intimated some space back, 
was game as a badger. He came into this rather 
high altitude directly from the plains, and he was 

265 



THE CABIN 

not in the best of shape for mountain travel. Never- 
theless, he stuck to it, and climbed all the steeps, 
and worked through without complaint until night- 
fall, carrying over his shoulder that piece of field 
ordnance of his, and a little hand-satchel containing 
his notes and computation tables. Among other 
things he brought with him a mule fully sixteen 
hands high, on which he used occasionally to ride 
to and from camp, when camp was very distant. 
The first time he mounted this tremendous animal, 
it bucked with him. The handle of the hand-satchel 
broke, and papers flew like flakes in a snow-storm. 
The Surveyor stayed with it, and only dismounted 
when one of us seized the animal's head. We 
loosened the back cinch, as a possible cause of war, 
and quite as a matter of fact the Surveyor started 
to remount. 

"I don't know as he'll let me ride him," was his 
only remark. 

The Surveyor was to me a marvel of patience as 
respects Tom. Tom was eager to do the right 
thing, but rattle-brained. He listened to the first 
three words of direction, instantly supplied his own 
conclusion — generally a wrong one — and acted 
on it. Then it took a strong counter-suggestion 
to head him right. That counter-suggestion I 
should have proffered with a club. From our 

266 



THE SURVEYORS 

position in advance, the usual interchange was 
about Hke this: 

Surveyor (shouting): "Try to get as far back 
against that tree as you can. No, this side the tree. 
Not so far! No, a little at a time. No, not that side, 
this side." 

Tom (excitedly): "Well, I can't tell what you do 
want. Why in hell don't you tell me just where you 
do want me ?" 

Surveyor (sweetly and patiently): "That's just 
what I'm trying to do, Tom. Try again." 

The man was always wrong; and he repeated 
stupid mistakes. I wondered how the Surveyor 
could possibly present to him always that front of 
calm and patient placidity. One day I happened 
to be back with the instrument. Then I discov- 
ered that the conversation went more like this, the 
italicized portions being uttered in a low voice. 

Surveyor:^'Try to get as far back against that tree 
as you can, you mutton-headed mud-turtle. No, this 
side — lucky there's only two sides or you'd get it wrong 
oftener, you thick-witted idiot. Not so far. Of 
course youd do it wrong. No, a little at a time. / 
wonder how many times I've told you that. I ought 
to get a phonograph and make you carry it. No, 
not that side, this side, as I before remarked eight 
thousand separate^ distinct, and several times." 

267 



THE CABIN 

Which seemed to me an admirable system. It 
relieved the Surveyor's mind without inducing a 
row. Tom was incurable; and the Surveyor, with 
a large wisdom, had early realized that fact. 

Our line soon developed that obstinate, resistant, 
almost inimical personality so often met in natural 
forces. It invariably crossed the highest, steepest 
hills and the deepest, most precipitous cafions, 
when easy "sags" and passes were just off its course. 
All day it would cling to the open rocky ridges while 
the sun shone clear and warm. Then it would rain 
over night. Next day we would find ourselves neck- 
deep in acre after acre of shower-wet brush. In 
three steps we would be soaked through, and would 
so remain. By noon the sun would have dried the 
bushes; whereupon ironically we would emerge once 
more into the open country. 

But always we made our day's distance, and when 
night approached, though tired, had left our records 
in the keeping of the forest for all time. Back 
tramped the friend who was then visiting us at the 
Cabin and I, to where we had last left our horses. 
As the sun dipped lower, we rode down through the 
silent forest. 

At this time of day the sunlight falls in a yellow 
gold on the distant ridges glimpsed through the trees, 
a yellower, weirder, deeper gold than I have ever 

268 



THE SURVEYORS 

seen elsewhere. The shadows rise cool from the 
darkening ravines. Twilight comes swiftly in these 
latitudes, and as swiftly gives place to night. By the 
time we had reached the summit of the ridge above 
the Cabin, Billy had already lit the lamp. We 
yelled an announcement of our coming; the dogs 
cut across lots through the brush; Flapjack, leaving 
his customary position in the rear, tinkled ahead 
and merrily leaped the fence to the meadow. 



269 



THE JOURNEY 



XXI 
THE JOURNEY 

IT TAKES as long to go to the Cabin as it would 
to go to Chicago. The first three days are 
very hot. On a cool fresh noon the thermometer 
stands from 90 to 95 degrees; on warm days from 
100 to 105 degrees; and on hot days from that on 
until the mercury explodes the bulb. This is fine for 
dried fruits, of which the production is enormous; 
for umbrella trees, with the black shade; and for 
horned toads, of which, however, the visible supply 
is gradually decreasing. It is not so desirable for 
him who rides; and still less pleasant for him whose 
unfortunate lines follow (over dusty roads) the slow 
progress of the stage. The heat beats from the hills 
and cuts as from an opened furnace door; the dust, 
wafted by a gentle following current of air, en- 
velops the vehicle in a cloud; the countryside is 
parched and brown, awaiting the annual rains; 
and the ground squirrels and burrowing owls and 
coyotes and brush birds merely irritate by a useless 
and senseless activity. Moreover, the stage leaves 

273 



THE CABIN 

the railroad at six in the morning, and drags uphill 
until five of the afternoon; which is a long time. 

The first two hours are not so bad. Even in the 
hot country the early morning keeps a certain fresh- 
ness of the night. The horses are lively, the country 
flat. Generally we let the dogs run, and they range 
wide, chasing madly after ground squirrels. But 
by the time we reach the foothills the peculiar 
burning-glass quality of the sun is beginning to 
strike in. The horses fall to a walk. The dogs drop 
in behind, exhibiting inches of pink dripping tongues. 
Seat cushions get hard. Then we round a corner 
and stop opposite a broad field between two hills. 
In the distance is a barn from which emerges an 
old man leading fresh horses. When he has de- 
livered these animals to the driver, he brings to us 
the basket he is carrying, from which — and from 
the great kindness of his heart — he distributes fresh 
figs or peaches and apricots according to the month. 
This old man has a long white beard, and a ruddy 
skin, and a cheerful blue eye, and is the first of our 
landmarks. 

For, as we go on, we lose our sense of propor- 
tion as respects time. No one can tell, after the 
heat has begun, whether it is ten o^clock or two. 
Generally it feels as if it should be six o'clock 
of day after to-morrow. The only means of esti- 

274 



THE JOURNEY 

mating progress is by the landmarks. After we 
had been over the stage ride once or twice these 
become unforgettably impressed. They are ab- 
surdly simple. There were, for instance, the Surly 
Family, who never answered our greetings; the 
House with the Twisted Tree as a verandah post; 
the Dog who comes after the Mail; the Two- 
Storied Adobe; the Wabbly Bridge; the old Gold 
Workings; the Leaning Chimney, of stone; the First 
Pine; and as many more as you please. Until we 
had been over the road five or six times, these land- 
marks held to us no sequence. We could not have 
told you which came first or second or fourth or last. 
They were so many isolated, distinct pictures. 
Merely we were certain that somewhere in the course 
of the long hot day they existed. Sometimes, toward 
the close of the journey, hoping to persuade our- 
selves we were almost arrived, we tried to think we 
had been mistaken. Certainly we had not passed 
the Two Old Men's Cabin, with the fig trees and the 
flowing well; but we must have been mistaken. 
We had seen them somewhere else. The journey's 
end must be over that ridge, and between here and 
there was obviously no more room for landmarks. 
So we tried to argue the non-existence of the Two 
Old Men; but inexorably at last they would shoulder 
their way into the weary hours of our day. The 

27S 



THE CABIN 

journey's end was not over that ridge; our land- 
marks declined to be wished away. 

But though we grew wearier as the day advanced, 
compensations came with the hours. We were 
climbing slowly but surely, and the oak trees, the 
buckthorn, the chaparral were constantly thicken- 
ing and growing taller. Rocks covered with lichens, 
red as paint, outcropped. Ravines and deep gashes 
cleft the hills. Running v/ater flowed in what lower 
down would have been dry barrancas. From one 
point we had seen the bold rocky serrated line of 
Shuteye, the snow still clinging to its crest. And as 
we drew slowly but surely nearer, the azure of our 
Ridge deepened to violet, then to slate; and at last, 
with the sunset light, to the deep, beautiful rose- 
pink and amethyst of evening. 

And then we strike a little down-grade. The 
horses trot ahead. We cross two bridges, and pull up 
opposite the shaded broad-roofed house. Aunt Belle 
comes out to greet us. We descend stiffly, and shake 
ourselves, and wonder if we will ever be able to get 
all the dust off. For we are coated with it, our faces 
are ash-gray with it, at every move we smoke with it. 

Next morning we saddle up, pack Flapjack, and 
set ourselves to the last steep climb. 

At first the chaparral, the manzanita, the digger 
pines follow us. But as we mount the steep side, 

276 



THE JOURNEY 

slowly the vegetation changes. Yellow pines, in- 
creasingly dense, replace the scattered diggers. 
Here and there a dogwood's fresh green and the 
broad cream petals of its blossoms shine in bright 
contrast. The light olive of snowbrush, the vivid 
green of bear clover, the polished leaves of chinqua- 
pin, perhaps even a tiny patch of azaleas offer a 
great refreshment to the eye. There is no more 
brown and powdery grass. The air, while still 
warm, bears on its tiny wandering breezes just a 
taste of crispness. Still, the plains and foothills 
lie below us, and the breath of them follows us 
scorching; the trees on the slope are of ordinary size 
— we are even yet in California, 

But after three hours or so we make a last scramble 
over the rim. 

Around us are the Trees, our great, beautiful 
Trees. The grass is green, the water sparkling, the 
birds shouting aloud with joy, the sky blue. Flowers 
are all about us, even to the edges of the melting snow- 
banks. California has been whisked away. We are 
back again in our magic country, and other places are 
not. It is as sudden as that; the mere topping of a hill. 

We ride along the old road, spying eagerly for the 
little changes. Winter, the gardener of these mighty 
domains, has been at work, pruning the limbs with 

277 



THE CABIN 

his shears whose twin blades are the Wind and the 
Snow. The fragments lie everywhere, but the tall, 
noble trees tower stronger and straighter for the 
shearing. Only here and there one of the brittle 
firs has lost a top or fallen full length to the ground. 
We spy out the strange, brilliant flames of the snow- 
plant; we listen for the hermit thrush; we note the 
job of axe work old Winter has left us to do before 
wheels can traverse our road. Over the skyline, 
down through the long aisle of the road, we espy 
Theophilus. We greet him with a shout. 

Ten minutes later, having shovelled the snow off the 
verandah, we are gazing into the darkened interior. 

"Goodness! What a mess!" cries Billy. 

She hunts her stubby little broom; I get out the 
axe. Before getting to work we step together to the 
edge of the verandah and look down the vista of 
the meadow to the new-young Spring. The peaceful 
accustomedness of it all descends softly on our spirits 
like a mist. We have never been away. Every- 
thing is as it was. The old life of the great 
spaces takes us familiarly by the hand. We do 
our daily accustomed tasks and pleasures, and at 
night fall asleep in the open. And then 

Suddenly we awaken late at night. It is pitch 
dark, and the wind is high. A heavy, swift rain 

278 



THE JOURNEY 

is beating down on us fiercely. To our sleep- 
numbed faculties it seems better to bear with those 
ills we have than to rush into unknown evils of wet 
brush on the way to the shelter of the Cabin. There- 
fore we pull our canvas quite over our heads and 
snuggle down in the blankets. Occasionally in a 
half-sleep we shrink from a wet space. The pelt 
of the rain lulls us. When we finally awaken after 
daylight, we find the outside of the canvas almost 
a solid sheet of ice. 

That day we notice several things; the meadow is 
eaten down; the horses, restless for the low country, 
huddle in the upper fence corner; the birds have all 
departed or fallen silent; the pine needles have for 
some weeks been sifting down as the great trees 
thinned their tops in preparation for snow. By 
these signs we know that the hour has struck. 

Therefore we pile everything in the middle of the 
floor, shutter the windows, board up the fireplace, 
wire the gates; bid Theophilus farewell, and ride 
away. Even before we have surmounted the little 
swell of our hill, the squirrels are swarming the shed 
kitchen; an impudent finch pulls away a chunk of 
mud from our chimney. Every year there is so 
much to do over again — clearing up that which the 
forest has sprinkled down over our belongings; 
cutting out the dead trees; bracing and repairing; 

279 



THE CABIN 

mending fences; pruning encroaching and persistent 
growth. The thought will not be stifled that per- 
haps we shall not be able to come one year — and 
another, and another. And then, perhaps, our 
friend the Forest will conclude that we are not com- 
ing back any more and quite gently will begin to 
take the tiny clearing to herself. She can do this 
very swiftly, adapting and changing what she can- 
not absorb. Billy thinks old Theophilus, Theoph- 
ilus the cynical and wise, will stand guard for us 
always. I respect, but do not understand, Theoph- 
ilus. He is quite capable of deciding cynically to 
ally himself with the wild forces. He is indifferent. 
And whether the undoubted Spirit of Wisdom with 
which he is animated could hold its own against the 
Spirit of the Woods, I am not sure. Near the back 
gate Billy has a grove of pines two inches tall which 
she is cherishing for remote generations. My pri- 
vate opinion is that before these tiny seedlings will 
have grown tall enough to cast a shadow over the 
Cabin, the sentinel pines, swaying gently just be- 
neath the sky, will signal their brothers of the Merced 
to the North, their sisters of the Kaweah to the South 
that at last these little human activities are indeed 
one "with Nineveh and Tyre." 



2B0 



NOTE 

In all the extent of the old White-Pine belt of the Eastern 
and Northern States the next generation will be able to look 
upon no sample of the forest that was. The stumps, even, 
are rotting away. The yellow pine timber of the South will 
have vanished and left no sign. Your children's children 
will have to believe as much as they are able of the descriptions 
to be found in the books they will exhume from the libraries. 
This conclusion is not the sentimental imagining of a pessimist. 
The remaining pine forests, such as they are, are in the hands 
of private owners, and will sooner or later find their way to the 
lumber piles. Replanting on an extensive scale is ultimately 
inevitable; but replanting will produce a crop of trees in rows, 
not a forest. 

This, I think, most of us have come to understand. What 
we do not realize is that those of us who have seen the great 
woodlands of California should rejoice, for there too the big 
fellows are doomed to vanish. 

How about our immense National Forests? How about 
Conservation ? 

It is true we have set aside for the public vast tracts of wood- 
land, but the National Forests are for use and not for integral 
preservation. They are intended to be lumbered off, just as 
private holdings are meant to be lumbered. The only difiference 
is that the Forest Service aims to cut the ripe trees in such a 
manner as to leave the woodland in a condition to produce a 

281 



NOTE 

future supply. In the perfected use of our resources, when 
private holdings have been cut over, and we turn for our lumber 
to Government reserves, all the full-grown mature trees will be 
harvested. The forest itself will be preserved, both as a water- 
shed and as a growing and perpetual supply, but it must neces- 
sarily change its character. The big trees will all be gone; and 
never more will they he seen again. 

A moment's figuring will show why this must be. Suppose 
an acre of forest land will produce 40,000 board feet. In a 
virgin forest this amount will be comprised in say three or 
four huge trees four hundred years old. The trees are cut 
down: a new growth springs up. At the end of eighty years 
there may be twenty trees cutting 2,000 feet apiece. At one 
hundred years five of the twenty will have died from over- 
crowding, but the fifteen remaining will have made sufficient 
growth to maintain the total at about 40,000 feet. From this 
time on the rate of increase is just about balanced by the rate of 
thinning. Purely as a commercial proposition it is better 
sense to cut the twenty smaller trees at eighty years than to 
wait for the three or four big ones; to harvest five crops in the 
length of time necessary to grow one of the old-fashioned sort. 
In the conserved National Forests no more than in the wasted 
and slashed private holdings can the future hope to look upon the 
great sugar pines and firs in the glory of their primeval majesty. 

The only hope of that is in setting aside national parks for 
their preservation, as we have set aside national parks for the 
preservation of other things, such as geysers, battlefields, canons, 
sequoias, and grass. In some of these numerous reservations, 
particularly in those dedicated to the so-called Big Trees, 
necessarily grow many specimens of the various pines and firs. 
But they are only specimens. To preserve intact the dignity 

282 



NOTE 

and majesty peculiar to these forests it would be necessary to 
set aside especial Sugar Pine Parks from districts where such 
species particularly flourish; and this has nowhere been done. 
If somewhere along the Sugar- Pine belt* some wisdom of 
legislation or executive decree could duplicate the Muir Woods 
on a greater scale, or the Sequoia National Park on a lesser, 
we would avoid the aesthetic mistake we made in tossing to 
memory alone the visions of our old primeval forests of the East. 
We had sense enough to set aside a portion of our sequoias, but 
that apparently was only because of their scarcity. Probably 
sugar pines are now actually too abundant to be bothered with. 
We are rapidly remedying that diflSculty. 



♦ The very best specimen of Sugar Pine Forest in Government control is situated on 
the south end of Whiskey Ridge in Madera 0)unty. Plans are now forward to cut 
this timber under Government supervision. 



The Country Lite Press, Garden City, N. Y. 



